The Spirit of Seventy-Six!
In honor of the 250th birthday of the Declaration of Independence, all recipes through July 4, 2026 will be from Centennial and Bicentennial cookbooks and the 1796 first American cookbook. Enjoy this look at the (gastronomic) spirit of ’76 as we head into the sestercentennial!
I’ve also published a Sestercentennial Cookery with recipes and photos.
Despite the lack of chemical leavener, these cookies turn out very light. I have no idea what makes them “German”. Usually when a national name is attached to a dish there’s an obvious connection. Potato pie? Well, then it’s Irish. Tomatoes? Spanish. It isn’t called that because it’s where the recipe is from, but because that was the style the author was trying to invoke. That this cookie has nothing to connect it with Germany leads me to suspect it might actually have come from, if not Germany, then the German-American community of 1876 in Philadelphia.
These cookies are called biscuits in the original, which was, I suspect, a classic shibboleth. The word “cookie” or “cooky” or a variation thereof with the same pronunciation appeared as early as 1796 in the very first known American cookbook. Why the term was avoided eight decades later—and Ella E. Myers did not use the term anywhere in her large cookbook—has to have a story behind it.
Perhaps no ingredient is as important as curiosity. — Samin Nosrat (Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat•)