1886: Long Island’s First
Fund-Raising Cookbook is Published

In 1886, the members of a church on Sound Avenue in present-day Riverhead compiled their favorite recipes into the first fundraising cookbook ever published on Long Island, "The Practical Cook Book." Fundraising cookbooks originated during the Civil War, when Ladies’ Aid Societies began publishing fundraising cookbooks to raise money for wounded soldiers and their families. After the war, churches, hospitals, and orphanages adopted the idea. During the 1700s, colonists had used cookbooks published in England. In 1742, an English cookbook called "The Complete Housewife," by Eliza Smith, was reprinted in Williamsburg, Virginia. A woman named Amelia Simmons self-published the first American cookbook in Albany, New York, in 1796. Its recipes used distinctively American ingredients like corn, pumpkin, and squash to make foods like winter squash pudding, spruce beer, and Indian slapjacks. A chicken salad from "The Practical Cookbook" is shown here.