#art of cookery

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Need help cooking a colonial English Thanksgiving meal? Look no further than our copy of the 1767 edition of Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. Hannah Glasse (1708-1770) was an English author and dressmaker whose seminal book on cookery, originally published in 1747, took the eighteenth-century English cookbook market by storm. Her work was particularly popular in the American colonies, with copies being found in the personal libraries of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington. Even after American independence, an 1840s New York memoir claimed “we had emancipated ourselves from the sceptre of King George, but that of Hannah Glasse was extended without challenge over our fire-sides and dinner-tables, with a sway far more imperative and absolute.”

Please enjoy the following recipes for turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, and, for dessert, apple frazes.*

*Unfortunately, the recipe for pumpkin pie didn’t appear until the 1805 first American edition.