Image: Zul Rosle from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia · CC BY 2.0
Plantation/colonial manuscript cookbooks
- Year
- 1750-1900
- Era
- 18th century
- Origin
- USA/Caribbean · Americas
- Language
- English
- Category
- Manuscript
Plantation and colonial manuscript cookbooks compiled across the American South and the Caribbean between roughly 1750 and 1900 form a heterogeneous corpus of handwritten domestic receipt books, household ledgers, and stillroom notes kept by mistresses of plantation households. Their culinary contents register the enforced labor and knowledge of enslaved cooks, making them documents of profound historical and ethical weight as well as primary sources for Creole, Southern, and Caribbean foodways. Provenance requires careful, sensitive handling.
Cooking from this book
Pepperpot
Signature dishPepperpot appears again and again across plantation and colonial manuscript cookbooks of the Americas, a long simmered meat stew darkened and preserved with cassareep, seasoned fiercely with chilli and aromatics. Its presence in these household ledgers reflects the entangled culinary knowledge of Indigenous, African and European cooks whose labour shaped colonial kitchens. Reading it today asks us to weigh the dish's deep cultural roots against the coerced hands that so often set it on the table.
An editorial note on a dish associated with this book, written for The Coquinist. It is not a reproduction of the book's recipe.
