Henriette Davidis

Henriette Davidis (1801 1876) is widely regarded as Germany's most famous and influential cookbook author. A minister's daughter from Westphalia, she spent her young adult years working as a house mistress at wealthy estates and as a teacher at a school for young women. Striving to educate her students to be good housewives and proper young ladies, she saw a lack of written guidelines in the education of young girls and women, especially in their education as young cooks. In the middle of the...See more

Henriette Davidis (1801 1876) is widely regarded as Germany's most famous and influential cookbook author. A minister's daughter from Westphalia, she spent her young adult years working as a house mistress at wealthy estates and as a teacher at a school for young women. Striving to educate her students to be good housewives and proper young ladies, she saw a lack of written guidelines in the education of young girls and women, especially in their education as young cooks. In the middle of the nineteenth century, at a time when more than four hundred mostly regional cookbooks were already flooding the German market, Davidis created a cookbook of "tested recipes" from all over German-speaking Europe, recipes that were so clear "that even inexperienced young housewives and children could follow them and become good cooks." Her "Practical Cookbook," first published in 1844, became an instant success. It went through twenty personally revised editions during her lifetime, and another forty-two editions before 1906. It was translated into Danish, Dutch, and English." See less