History and Cooking - Antique Cookbooks

For my friends who like history and cooking, I have two books by Mary J. Lincoln. They are not to be confused with the more famous Boston Cooking School Cookbook by Fannie Farmer. (I'll write about that in a future post).  Up until the late 1800s, generally you learned how to cook from your mother. For female children, it was simply a part of growing up that your chores reflected the domestic tasks that you would need to know how to do so one day you could take care of your own household.  A group of Boston philanthropists, influenced by seeing a cooking school in London, decided to open a school in 1879. They aimed to help people who wanted to cook for their families as well as those who wanted to become cooks for a living. A secondary aim was to be of particular benefit for those who were poor, such as the immigrants living in Boston's North End. The late 1800s was a boom time for immigration to the US; however, those who immigrated here often had a hard time coping with la...