National Network for Equitable Library Service

Mary Mann, one of the famous Peabody sisters—reformers and pioneers of modern educational theory—believed that good digestion was synonymous with virtue, and dyspepsia was equated with sin. So the advice and recipes in her cookbook promote good eating habits in accordance with this belief, discouraging the consumption of processed and fatty foods labeling them “death in the pot.” In accordance with her temperance beliefs, alcohol should not be used in cooking, and butter or lard, turtle soup, wheat flour, vinegar and baking soda were all unchristian. “Compounds, like wedding cake, suet plum-puddings and rich turtle soup, are masses of indigestible material, which should never find their way to any Christian table... If asked why I pronounce these and similar dishes unchristian, I answer that health is one of the indispensable conditions of the highest morality and beneficence.” Her cookbook contains several hundred recipes for a wide variety of dishes from soup to nuts (including meat—she was not a vegetarian) that reflect this philosophy. This edition of Christianity in the Kitchen by Mary Tyler Peabody Mann was reproduced by permission from the volume in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded in 1812 by Isaiah Thomas, a Revolutionary War patriot and successful printer and publisher, the Society is a research library documenting the life of Americans from the colonial era through 1876. The Society collects, preserves, and makes available as complete a record as possible of the printed materials from the early American experience. The cookbook collection includes approximately 1,100 volumes.