Abby Fisher's Corn Bread

History

Abby Fisher's corn bread recipe appears in her 1881 cookbook, the first known cookbook published by a formerly enslaved African American woman. Fisher, born into slavery around 1831, developed her culinary expertise in the antebellum South before moving to San Francisco, where she won awards for her pickles and preserves. Her cookbook preserves African American Southern cooking traditions from the enslaved and post-emancipation era. Corn bread itself has deep roots in Native American cuisine and became a Southern staple, particularly important in African American foodways where wheat flour was less accessible. Fisher's version represents authentic 19th-century Black Southern cooking.

Sources

• Fisher, Abby. What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking. 1881.
• Bower, Anne L., editor. African American Foodways: Explorations of History and Culture. University of Illinois Press, 2007.
• Twitty, Michael W. The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South. Amistad, 2017.
• Harris, Jessica B. High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America. Bloomsbury, 2011.
• Tipton-Martin, Toni. The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks. University of Texas Press, 2015.