The Spirit of Seventy-Six!

In honor of the 250th birthday of the Declaration of Independence, all recipes through July 4, 2026 will be from Centennial and Bicentennial cookbooks and the 1796 first American cookbook. Enjoy this look at the (gastronomic) spirit of ’76 as we head into the sestercentennial!

I’ve also published a Sestercentennial Cookery with recipes and photos.

Cranberry Tart: Amelia Simmons’s Cranberry Tart, from the 1796 American Cookery.; pie; cranberries; recipe; eighteenth century; 1700s; America’s Vicennial

There is absolutely nothing about this dish that marks it as over two hundred years old. The recipe, on the other hand, is very obviously an older one. Under the title “Cranberries” in the section “tarts”, it says only:

“Stewed, strained and sweetened, put into paste No. 9, and baked gently.”

Last week’s Royal Paste Number 9 will be great for this if you want full authenticity. Otherwise, any pastry recipe or store-bought pastry will be fine. The draw of this recipe is the cranberries, not the shell.

Drop in again soon for another vintage recipe! I’ll have a different recipe every Sunday afternoon throughout the year. Keep an eye on this page or subscribe to the RSS feed for further details. You can also browse past featured Club recipes as well as some of the vintage promotional cookbooks I’ve used as sources. And I collect many of these recipes in A Traveling Man’s Cookery Book.

Recipe blogging:

Originals:

Inspirations:

Archives:

The more you know about food, the more you can enjoy life. — Elizabeth Gordon (Cuisines of the Western World)