Homebrewing has become increasingly popular over the past few years. We have several cookbooks in the database Early American Imprints ranging from topics of homemade wine, beer, puff pastry, tarts, and more. These databases might be helpful if you are tracing the history of an ingredient or preparation technique.

• Every man his own brewer, a small treatise, explaining the art and mystery of brewing porter, ale, and table-beer; recommending and proving the ease and possibility of every man’s brewing his own porter, ale and beer, in any quantity. From one peck to an hundred bushels of malt. Calculated to reduce the expense of a family, and lessen the destructive practice of public-house tippling, by exposing the deception in brewing. By Samuel Child, porter brewer, London.
• The new art of cookery; according to the present practice; being a complete guide to all housekeepers, on a plan entirely new; consisting of thirty-eight chapters. … With bills of fare for every month in the year, neatly and correctly printed. By Richard Briggs, many years cook at the Globe Tavern, Fleet-Street, the White Hart Tavern, Holborn, and now principal of the Temple Coffee-House, London.

As we approach Thanksgiving, you might be interested in studying the history of various Thanksgiving dishes. Here is a lengthy description on how to truss a turkey.