Abby Fisher

Written By Stefanie Goldberg

Written by Stefanie Goldberg

What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Southern Cooking

 

b. 1832 | d. ?

From the establishment of Mrs. Abby Fisher & Company to the publication of What Mrs. Fisher Knows about Old Southern Cooking, Abby Fisher demonstrated not only her business acumen but her intelligence and professionalism, making visible the labor of Black women in the domestic sphere.

 
 

Born in 1832, Fisher learned to cook in the kitchens of plantations (this information gleaned from certain recipes within her cookbook). By the end of the Civil War, she, her husband Alexander C. Fisher, and their eleven children had gained their freedom and were able to leave the South behind for San Francisco, where she was a caterer and opened up a small pickle business called Mrs. Abby Fisher & Company. Fisher had already established herself as a local culinary authority, however, taking home a diploma (the highest honor) at the Sacramento State Fair in 1879 and winning medals for her pickles, sauces, and preserves at the San Francisco Mechanics’ Institute Fair in 1880 (Mejia).

Fisher’s cookbook was all but forgotten for over a century. It was in 1984 when food historian Karen Hess saw it at a Sotheby’s auction that it re-entered the scene, and 1994 when Phil Zuckerman of Applewood Books was able to print facsimiles of the original cookbook with a historical afterward written by Hess (Wright-Ruiz).

Of great importance is that the text of this cookbook was transcribed, as Fisher was unable to read or write (identified in her “Preface and Apology”). Despite the lack of formal educational training, the printed cookbook demonstrates her intelligence, her technical capacity, and the reproducibility and reliability of her knowledge, thwarting the mythologies that black female cooks did everything by instinct. As Sarah Walden wrote, “African American women participated in the intellectual labor of cookery by recording and publishing their own recipes” (Walden 159), and the publication of this cookbook gave Fisher ownership over her recipes, her printed demonstration of culinary knowledge security from whites laying claim to her expertise. 

Fisher further established her authority as a culinary professional by indicating her years of experience, “upwards of thirty five years”, and emphasizing her success as a professional cook (Fisher). With each recipe, clear measurements and instructions are recorded, another way to lay claim to authority but at the level of a domestic scientist. Perhaps the most surprising and interesting endorsement of her authority comes in the final recipe listed in her book, Pap for Infant Diet, where she writes, “I have given birth to eleven children and raised them all, and nursed them with this diet” (Fisher 72). For a mother in the 19th century to birth eleven children was remarkable, but what was more remarkable was to see them all grow up, as many held their breath due to the high infant mortality rates. This singular sentence validates Fisher not only as a mother but as a cook whose food can nourish and support fragile infant life.

Fisher’s cookbook helped “immortalize the culinary imprint of African-Americans” (Mejia). She believed deeply in passing down these culinary traditions to the younger generation and dictated her recipes so they could be preserved. Fisher didn’t experience her illiteracy as a barrier, she instead was emboldened by and grounded in her intelligence and success as a culinary professional and business woman. She even tucked in a slight dig at her white audience, stating “The book will be found a complete instructor, so that a child can understand it and learn the art of cooking” (Fisher); as Rafia Zafar wrote perfectly bluntly, “Fisher appears to imply that if ‘a child’ can follow her instructions, an inept White middle-class reader can do so, as well” (89). Through her text, Fisher challenges white domestic authority by making visible the invisible labor of Black women in the domestic sphere. She leaves behind a legacy of culinary history and heritage, reminding and empowering Black women to take up space.

Sources

Stefanie Goldberg
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