author
Amelia Simmons
Best known for publishing American Cookery in 1796, this early American writer helped give the new nation a cookbook of its own. The book is often recognized as the first known cookbook written by an American and is remembered for using local ingredients and distinctly American dishes.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Very little is known for certain about Amelia Simmons’s life, and that mystery is part of what makes her so intriguing. She is chiefly known as the author of American Cookery, first published in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1796. On its title page, she described herself as an “American orphan,” a small detail that has shaped much of what later readers believe about her background.
What makes Simmons important is the place her book holds in literary and food history. American Cookery is widely described as the first known cookbook written by an American for an American audience. Instead of simply repeating British cooking habits, it worked with ingredients familiar in the United States and helped define a style of cooking that felt local, practical, and independent.
Her surviving work suggests a writer with firsthand household knowledge and a clear sense of her readers’ needs. Even though the facts of her life remain scarce, Simmons’s influence has lasted for centuries because her book captured everyday cooking in the early republic and helped shape the story of American food.