A woman named Abby Fisher, a former slave from South Carolina, is the author of the first published African-American cookbook and the first cookbook published by a former slave.

Born in 1832, Fisher worked and came to know cooking in the kitchens of the plantations. Freed after the Civil War, Fisher and her husband, Alexander, gathered their 11 children and moved to San Francisco. Her cooking, especially pickles, jellies and preserves, would become an instant success with friends and the upper class. She would be known around town as “Mrs. Abby Fisher, Pickle Manufacturer.”

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