Doing some research on the foodways of 1875, I found that in 1876, the women of the First Congregational Church in Marysville, Ohio, published a cookbook to raise money to build a parsonage. They called it the Centennial Buckeye Cookbook. It turned out to be one of America’s most popular cookbooks. I like the dedication on the frontispiece of the first edition:

“To the plucky housewives of 1876, who master their work instead of allowing it to master them.”

Darker, though, is this unattributed quote with which the book opens: “Bad dinners go hand in hand with total depravity, while a properly fed man is already half saved.”