The Hygeian Home Cook-Book (1874)

AUTHOR: Trall, Russell Thacher

KEYWORDS: food, health, recipes

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen)

This is widely considered to be the first American vegan cookbook. Trall's recipes contain no animal food and are fully vegan. 

In his short Preface, Trall writes that the recipes are all derived from experience and practice at the “Hygeian Home,” his water-cure institution. From its inception, as Trall explains, the institution has excluded “milk, sugar, salt, yeast, acids, alkalies, grease, or condiments of any kind. Our only seasonings have been fruits and other foods in a normal state, so prepared and combined as to produce the requisite flavor to please without perverting the taste” (5). For “[t]hose who desire a more complete treatise on diet, with a plan for plain and wholesome cooking” (5), Trall recommends his more extensive Hydropathic Cook Book.

The booklet contains a selection of recipes for breads, mushes, pies, puddings, sauces, soups, vegetables, fruits and instruction for preserving them. The . The breads are usually made of “unbolted wheat-meal (Graham flour)” (10) and pies are made “without yeast or grease” (25). In relation to sauces, Trall writes: "Persons whose ideas of sauces as dressings or relishes for food, are limited to combinations of butter, sugar, salt, vinegar, and spices, may be astonished to learn what varieties of wholesome as well as palatable articles can be made by combinations of fruits and their juices" (35). He discourages the use of  “salt, sugar, vinegar, alcohol, etc.” for the purposes of preservation. “Canning, drying, and refrigeration” are the only permissible methods (64).