Old Southern Cookery: Recipes from America’s First Regional Cookbook Adapted for Today’s Kitchen gives new life to a beloved book that has spanned two centuries. Using the historic recipes from Mary Randolph’s 1824 bestselling cookbook, The Virginia House-Wife or Methodical Cook (considered by many culinary historians to be the first real American cookbook–and all describe it as the first regional cookbook), the authors have chosen the best of the original recipes to show how home cooks can prepare the food using contemporary methods.

In translating these historic cooking methods to today’s kitchen techniques, headnotes contain pertinent historic facts about such things as butchery, firewood cooking, spices used, European origins of certain recipes, dishes brought by slaves to the new world, and even how our cooking utensils have evolved through two centuries.