The Pennsylvania Dutch School

I have used the phrase “classic Pennsylvania Dutch cookery” as though at one time there existed a school or style of cookery with a definable character. While the boundaries of this style are somewhat nebulous and like cookery itself ever-shifting, the core themes may be said to center on a group of cookbooks that have served as guides and inspiration.

It is true that cookbooks have taken back seat to oral tradition, especially to the “historical” dishes at the heart of our cookery and to the vast culinary lore buried in Pennsylvania Dutch newspapers and almanacs—the real mass literature of the culture. But for professionals and the social elite who, by their example, have furnished the rest of the Pennsylvania Germans with culinary models, cookbooks have certainly been important and avidly collected.