A rare copy of the first cookbook known to have been published by a black woman has found a home at Harvard University.
The cookbook, “What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking, Soups, Pickle, Preserves, Etc.” by Abby Fisher, has been acquired by the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.
The book was published in 1881 by the Women’s Cooperative Printing Office of San Francisco. Fisher, a former slave, is thought to be the first black woman in America to write and collect her own recipes.
After the Civil War, she and her family moved from Mobile, Ala., to San Francisco, where she raised 11 children and worked as caterer to the city’s elite society.
Fisher won a diploma at the Sacramento State Fair in 1879, and won two medals – for best pickles and sauces, and best assortment of jellies and preserves – at the San Francisco Mechanics Institute Fair in 1880.
With her groundbreaking cookbook, the university says, “Fisher dazzles by bringing ‘soul food’ to the heart of American culture.”
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