The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery

A nineteenth-century cookbook by the founder of New York’s first cooking school providing affordable recipes and kitchen skills for working class American women.



Published in 1877, this volume in the American Antiquarian Cookbook Collection was written by one of the “great ladies” of American cooking who founded the first cooking school in New York City to help unemployed working-class women find work as domestics. This exceptional book by a remarkable woman in American culinary history was aimed at answering the question Corson posed in her cooking manual, “How well can we live, if we are moderately poor?” She dedicated her life and her career to providing the answer in this book and others, to suggest recipes for “the most wholesome and palatable dishes at the least possible cost.” Her solutions included the principle of using everything available and wasting nothing, avoiding expensive cuts of meat and using lentils, peas, and macaroni as nutritious alternatives, exploring gardens and fields for new delicious greens, such as dandelions, sorrel, chicory, and other creative cookery techniques. This important book in the American culinary canon expanded the cooking philosophies of many lower- and middle-class women of the day.

This edition of The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery was reproduced by permission from the volume in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts, founded in 1812.