Mrs. Fisher’s Cigarettes

While researching a book devoted to the oft-maligned but secretly adored subject of fried foods, I was drawn to What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking. Abby Fisher was an Black cook of wide renown in Victorian San Francisco. Remarkably, the city’s Women’s Co-operative Printing Office published the collection of her recipes in 1881. The book remained a rare and esoteric piece of American history until it was republished in 1995, with historical notes by the scholar Karen Hess. It was thought to be the first published cookbook by a Black author until the tireless culinary historian and archivist Jan Longone made public her lone copy of Malinda Russell’s Domestic Cookbook (1866).