Which 1824 cookbook by Mary Randolph contains a well-known early American fried-chicken recipe?

Mary Randolph’s 1824 cookbook The Virginia Housewife contains a well-known early American fried-chicken recipe.

The Virginia Housewife: Or, Methodical Cook was first published in Washington, D.C. Randolph was a member of a prominent Virginia family, and her cookbook collected recipes for food preparation, household management, and preserving ingredients.

Its fried-chicken instructions call for young chickens to be cut up, seasoned, coated with flour, and fried in fat. That basic method resembles the preparation still recognized as traditional American fried chicken, although recipes and preferred fats vary widely by region and period.

The book is historically important because it helped document Southern cooking in print. It should not be confused with later regional titles such as The Kentucky Housewife. Randolph’s work predates the twentieth-century restaurant chains that later made fried chicken internationally famous.