Recipes, in America, as in the rest of the world, are the ideas and the instructions for handling foods and preparing particular dishes. Although directions for cooking exist in oral form, the historical record is derived mainly from those that are written down, and this account of the development of the recipe in America is based on the written record.
From the times of earliest settlement in the New World, the new immigrants brought their recipes with them. Prominent among the early compilations was a seventeenth-century work, De Verstandige Kock (The Sensible Cook), a book brought by Dutch settlers, whose recipes used the simple, abbreviated forms of the period:
To Make Meatballs. Take veal with veal-fat chopped, add to it mace, nutmeg, salt, pepper, knead it together, then you can make [meatballs] from it as large or as small as you please, also all of it is fried in the pan as one large meatball. Many take a few of the outside peels thinly pared of oranges or lemons, cut very fine. It gives a very good smell and flavor.
Recipe. Eighteenth-century beef sausage recipe.
Courtesy of the Culinary Arts Museum at Johnson & Wales University
