author
Mary Ronald
1844–1903
Best known for the practical and wide-ranging Century Cook Book, this late-19th-century American writer published her cookery books under the name Mary Ronald while also building a reputation as a naturalist. Her work blends household skill with a clear, curious eye for the natural world.
2 Audiobooks
The Century Cook Book
by Mary Ronald
Luncheons: A Cook's Picture Book
by Mary Ronald
About the author
Writing as Mary Ronald, Augusta Foote Arnold published two cookbooks that found a wide readership, including The Century Cook Book and Luncheons: A Cook's Picture Book. Those books helped make her name familiar to home cooks at the turn of the century.
She was more than a cookbook author, though. Under her own name, Augusta Foote Arnold also wrote The Sea-Beach at Ebb-Tide, a well-regarded work on shore life and marine natural history, showing the same practical clarity that marks her food writing.
That mix of domestic knowledge and scientific interest gives her work a special charm today. Whether she was explaining a recipe or describing life along the shore, she wrote in a way that aimed to be useful, observant, and inviting.