The introductory texts reproduced here were written by the original Feeding America team to contextualize the books that were selected for inclusion as part of the 2001 digitization project.
Mary At The Farm And Book Of Recipes Compiled During Her Visit Among The "Pennsylvania Germans,"
By Edith M. Thomas. With Illustrations...
Norristown, Pa., Printed By John Hartenstine, 1915.
What a marvelous book this is. It offers insight into the lives, manners, domestic arts and cuisine of the Pennsylvannia Dutch people. It is considered among the major reliable early 20th century sources for this uniquely American cuisine.
After interviewing a number of old informants, the author, Edith M. Thomas, wove together this factual but fictitious story of Mary Midleton and her visit one summer to the farm of her Aunt Sarah and Uncle John.
At age nineteen, Mary is about to be married and feels the need of learning about "how to keep house, cook, economize and to learn how to get the most profit from life." What better school could she have than the Bucks County farm home of her great aunt and uncle. Aunt Sarah teaches Mary various crafts (especially beadwork and rug-making) and reveals the mysteries of cooking in hundreds of pages of authentic and traditional recipes, many accompanied by the stories and lore associated with them.
To read the recipe titles is to savor this special cuisine: Preserved Yellow Ground Cherries, Brod Knodel (Bread Dumplings), German Pot Pie, Green Corn Fritters, Mouldasha (Parsley Pies), Sour Cream Crullers, Pickled Red Cabbage, Brown Potato Chowder, Sauergebrauten, Gedamptes Rinderbrust, Snitzel, Pebble-Dash or Shoo-Fly Pie, Rivel Kuchen, Aunt Sarah's Cheese Cake and hundreds more.
America has many distinct ethnic/religious groups with their own special foodways. We have chosen this book to represent not only the Pennsylvania Dutch, but also the other groups, such as the Quakers, Shakers, Doukabours, Mormons, etc. This book was reprinted in 1928 and is quite hard to find in either edition. We are pleased to make it available once again to interested culinary historians.
