Abby Fisher’s 1881 book of recipes opens with an apology. Unable to read or write, the former slave and accomplished Southern cook apparently felt uneasy about producing the cookbook that was so often requested of her. Never mind that her contemporaries – such as Mrs. B. C. Howard and Mrs. Charles H. Gibson – didn’t express concerns about filling their books with copied and untested recipes, not to mention the countless recipes gleaned and pilfered from slaves and servants. These (usually) wealthy women continued to profit off of unpaid labor, if not monetarily then by reputation at least. When Abby Fisher wrote/dictated “What Mrs. Fisher Knows about Old Southern Cooking,” she was not only leaving history with a precious document – she was claiming a legacy for herself.
I was recently delighted to come across a blog focused entirely on the recipes found in Mrs. Fisher’s cookbook. [2/8/19 – it has come to my attention that the blog is no longer up and is sadly not archived. I have replaced a few links with substitutes]
There is some good biographical background on Mrs. Fisher on Nicholas Mimms’ blog – including insight into her post-emancipation life in San Francisco, and even photos of her unmarked grave site.
If you enjoy Old Line Plate you will definitely want to follow ‘What Mrs. Fisher Knows.’
I reached out to Mimms for more information on the project:
I picked Mrs. Fisher because she was a Southern cook who ended up in San Francisco, and I’m from the South (from Georgia) and also found myself in San Francisco. So yeah, I guess our shared geography was one of the first things that first interested me in her book. I was actually looking to do Mary Randolph’s The Virginia House-Wife, but Mrs. Fisher’s book was much more manageable and her story (what we know of it at least) much more inspiring.
Abby Fisher was quite an impressive figure. To put her story into perspective: She was enslaved for the first ~30 years of her life. After emancipation, she moved across the country with her family (and remember, this was no easy task back then—the transcontinental railroad had only just been constructed, and the West was still pretty “Wild”). Within three years of arrival in San Francisco, she had earned several awards in recognition for her cooking ability, started her own business, and published one of the first cookbooks written by a Black woman. All of this, when slavery was a fresh memory. All of this, when women were relegated to the domestic sphere (and would not gain the right to vote for another 40 years).
Do you have any specific goal in mind for the blog?
I want to eventually cook through all of the recipes, modernize them with as little interference as possible, and put them all in one accessible place. I want Mrs. Fisher to get more recognition, since she’s too interesting and inspiring a person to be lost to time. Sadly, she’s buried in an unmarked grave in Colma, California. I’ve been to the plot where she and her husband are buried, but I wasn’t able to find a headstone.
While it was originally just gonna be a do-every-recipe-in-the-(historical)-book blog, I’ve become more and more interested in the person of Mrs. Abby Fisher herself, even more than the recipes. I’ve since added more “context” about her life, but it’s been really tough finding information about her at all. It’s still a work in progress, for sure…
Do you have any culinary background to help you adapt these old recipes which are sometimes rather vague?
I don’t have a culinary background. I have a bachelor’s degree in Economics and Chemistry, but I bake things for fun. Maybe the chemistry helps a bit, but I really have no training beyond watching Food Network. If a technical challenge comes up (like making pie dough or the sponge-and-dough method for making bread), I just try to research as much as possible.
Reprint of “What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking,” The Henry Ford Gift Shop
Are there any other sources that you like to use for cross reference?
I mostly use Google to find as many comparable recipes to cross-reference. One historical book I find myself coming back to a lot is Mary Randolph’s The Virginia House-Wife; Or, Methodical Cook (1824), which is one of the definitive 19th-century Southern cookbooks. You can read the transcribed text here, and find PDFs for free online.
Many of the recipes in Abby Fisher’s book have a parallel in Mary Randolph’s, so it serves as a good foil. Randolph’s book is just as expansive as Mrs. Fisher’s, if not more, covering as wide-ranging dishes as British Charlotte Russe, to Spanish Ropa Vieja, to “Gumbo, A West India Dish.” Randolph’s book is also much longer, but to be fair, she had the privilege of being literate whereas Abby Fisher did not; Mrs. Fisher had to write her book 100% from memory.
The Carolina Housewife (1847) by Sarah Rutledge is another that I’ve looked at (full text here). Also, sites like The Spruce, Serious Eats, and King Arthur Flour’s blog have all been generally helpful.
What insight have you gained from personally cooking the recipes?
I think one of the main insights I’ve gotten is how many things can get lost in translation. Mrs. Fisher, in her introduction, says that she’s going to detail the recipes as much as possible, “so that a child can understand it” (her words, not mine). And to her credit, the book is clearly detailed, with relatively exact quantities and methods, especially for the time they were written in. Her “child” quote still taunts me after every failed recipe…
In the journey from Mrs. Fisher’s mind, to the transcriber’s words, to my modern translation, to my attempted cooking, these recipes go through three ‘transformations’ where things can go wrong:
First, the original recipe could be transcribed incorrectly (She was illiterate, so her recipe book is actually transcribed from her words, and the transcriber’s pen may have missed certain instructions). Some recipes are very obviously mis-transcribed, like her Ginger Cookie dough that is just a dry powder (not enough liquid!).
Second, there could be differences in the ingredients and technology used now and used then; I try to account for these differences in my modern translations, but I’m definitely missing things. For example, every time cornmeal gets involved, the batter gets really dry, so I figure the cornmeal back then was definitely more coarsely ground than today’s “fine” grind.
And finally, I could just be botching the darned thing. I’ve definitely curdled eggs, mishandled dough, and overbaked cakes along the way, even in recipes that 100% should work.
So yeah, a lot of the recipes looked pretty good on paper, and only after trying them out, you see all the places they could be going wrong, whether it’s the recipe itself, the ingredients, or your clumsy hand.
Recipe #1 from Mrs. Fisher’s book
Have any of the recipes you’ve tried so far been particularly delicious or challenging?
One of my favorite recipes so far was her no-churn vanilla ice cream recipe. It’s a frozen combination of soft meringue and whipped cream, which I found odd, but it tasted just like some modern ice creams. Actually, it tasted mostly like those cheap artificial vanilla ice creams that are thickened with guar gum or carrageenan or whatever, but still delicious! And Mary Berry (of British Bake-Off fame) has a very similar no-churn ice cream recipe, so you know it’s good.
Her molasses-heavy ginger cake is also delicious (though the method is in a weird order), as well as her sweet potato pie, which isn’t flavored with typical “pumpkin pie spices” but with orange peel and juice. All the ones I thought were unqualified successes I gave a “recommended” tag on the website. The others aren’t quite there, either because something got lost in translation and the recipe isn’t too good, or I just failed colossally in making it. They could still be worth a try!
As for challenging recipes, I guess the Sally Lund recipe took me a few attempts. Sally Lunn is a no-knead, overnight-rising bread that originated in Bath, England and eventually made its way to the Southern colonies. Because it is (relatively) no-knead, I’ve been having difficulty with the final texture… I keep getting a soda bread-like, crumbly inside that tastes okay, but not as buttery and moist as I’d hoped for.
And don’t get me started on her popover (“Breakfast Cream Cake”) recipe…
Visit Nick’s blog here:
http://whatmrsfisherknows.com/
To accompany this post, I attempted one of the recipes that Mimms has already completed. I can’t resist a good “what in the heck…?” recipe and so I went straight for “Cheese Pudding,” a baked casserole of shredded apple and cheese. The formula is reminiscent of Pineapple Casserole.
I actually like the combination of cheddar cheese and apples so I went in that direction. I added a grated shallot which is not inauthentic if you consider this a savory dish. I also used pepper-jack which I’m pretty sure did NOT exist in 1881 (see? the past wasn’t that great!)
After eating some very custard-y servings as pictured here, I stirred in another egg and baked the dish a little while longer, because certain household members couldn’t hang with the texture.
As a sweet dish, this could be made with a soft cottage type cheese. But where’s the adventure in that?
“What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking” can be found scanned online or for sale in a facsimile hard-copy.