Dorchester Illustration no. 2273 Account of the Manufacture and Use of Cocoa
The first known recipe pamphlet issued by Walter Baker & Co. was entitled An Account of the Manufacture and Use of Cocoa and Chocolate and was published in 1876. The next was Chocolate Receipts, which was published about 1880. In addition to publishing recipes, Baker extols the nutritional value of chocolate and cites many experts. Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland, a German physician, is quoted: “I recommend good chocolate to nervous, excitable persons; also to the weak, debilitated and infirm; to children and women. I have obtained excellent results from it in many cases of chronic deseases of the digestive organs.”
The first teacher of the Boston Cooking School, Maria Parloa, wrote many of the recipes for Walter Baker & Co.’s 1899 pamphlet, Choice Recipes. She was a well-known cookbook author and teacher. The Appledore Cook Book, her first, was published in 1872. Though little is known of her early life, she attended the Maine Central Institute when she was 28 years old. The Appledore Cook Book, published the next year, tells us that she had worked as a cook in private families and had worked as a pastry chef in several New Hampshire hotels. She went into teaching in Mandarin, Florida, where she gave her first lecture on cooking to raise money for the purchase of an organ for the local Sunday School. Encouraged by her success, she opened a cooking school in 1877 on Tremont Street in Boston. In 1879 she agreed to teach at the Boston Cooking School, a project of the Women’s Education Association. Over the years she published Miss Parloa’s New Cook Book and Marketing Guide (1881) and Practical Cookery (1884) as well as writing many articles for the Ladies’ Home Journal, of which she was a part owner.
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