author
Maria J. Moss
A 19th-century writer with a wonderfully unusual idea, she paired recipes with lines of poetry in A Poetical Cook-Book. Her book was published in Philadelphia in 1864 and is remembered as an early American charity cookbook connected to Civil War relief.
1 Audiobook
A Poetical Cook-Book
by Maria J. Moss
About the author
Little is firmly documented about Maria J. Moss beyond her surviving work, but her place in culinary history is memorable. She is known for A Poetical Cook-Book, published in Philadelphia in 1864, a lively collection that blends practical cookery with literary quotations and verse.
The book appeared during the American Civil War and was sold for charitable purposes connected to relief for the wounded. That mix of domestic instruction, wit, and public generosity has helped it endure, and later readers have often noted it as one of the earliest American charity cookbooks.
Today, Moss is remembered less through a detailed personal record than through the charm of this single distinctive volume. Its mix of food writing, poetry, and historical feeling offers a small but vivid window into everyday life, reading culture, and benevolent work in the 1860s.