Stuffed Bell Peppers

Yesterday's brief research into the history of brownies got me thinking about how cool it would be to focus this blog on the histories of different foods and/or recipes, particularly in American cooking.  As I noted yesterday, the Michigan State library has an online collection of old cookbooks (here).  Anyway, I spent some time tooling around their catalog today, and found what is generally credited to be the first American cookbook - Amelia Simmons' American Cookery, or the art of dressing viands, fish, poultry, and vegetables, and the best modes of making pastes, puffs, pies, tarts, puddings, custards and preserves, and all kinds of cakes, from the imperial plum to the plain, adapted to this country, and all grades of life.  That title just rolls off the tongue. 

First published in 1798 - a full 20 years after the Revolutionary War began - the cookbook was the first to be written by an American using American ingredients, although many of her recipes were borrowed from British cookbooks of the time.  Her cookbook is truly unique, though, in its use of New World ingredients, which at that time were uncommon in Britain.  Crops like corn, squash, and bean (known as the Three Sisters), as well as Jerusalem artichokes and cranberries, are featured in her cookbook but were harder to come by for the average Brit. Besides shedding light on early American cookery, Simmons' book also provides a glimpse into the development of a national identity, and particularly the role of women in America - indeed, she writes that her "treatife is calculated for the improvement of the rifing generation of Females in America."  (Oh those crazy early Americans, using f's in place of s's when they feel like it!)  She was the one to emphasize Females, by the way, not me.  For what it's worth. 

What would Amelia Simmons do?