Chocolate and Cocoa Recipes

Maria Parloa

Maria Parloa (September 25, 1843 – August 21, 1909) was an American author of books on cooking and housekeeping, the founder of two cooking schools, a lecturer on food topics, and an early figure in the “domestic science” (later “home economics”) movement.

Biography

A culinary pioneer, she was arguably America’s first celebrity cook, considered “one of the innovative superstars of her field”. Maria Parloa was born in Massachusetts on September 25, 1843. Both her mother and father were born in New York. Little is known about her early life; she is said to have been orphaned young. Nor is it known where she learned to cook, although, in the Preface to her first book, The Appledore Cook Book, published in 1872, she asserts that she has “had years of experience as a cook in private families and hotels.” The latter included the Rockingham House, Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Pavilion Hotel, Wolfeboro, New Hampshire; McMillan House, North Conway, New Hampshire; and the Appledore Hotel on Appledore Island, Maine, one of the Isles of Shoals.

1871, Parloa entered the Normal School of the Maine Central Institute, Pittsfield, Maine, completing her teacher training course two years later. Following graduation, Maria Parloa accepted a position as a teacher in “a small country school” in Mandarin, Florida (a small town now part of the City of Jacksonville), where she remained for five winters. During this time, she talked about cooking to raise money to buy “a small cabinet organ” for the local Sunday school. This led to an invitation to lecture on “Cooking and Digestion” in New London, Connecticut, during the summer of 1876. It was so well received that in May 1877, she gave a successful series of four talks in one of the lecture rooms at Boston’s Tremont Temple. As she later recollected, “The interest seemed to warrant my undertaking the work, and I decided to open a school in the fall of 1877, which I did on Tremont Street. The interest was very great, and all the time I had my school in Boston I had more than I possibly could do …” Miss Parloa’s School of Cooking opened in October 1877, at 174 Tremont Street, Boston. (This should not be confused with the Boston Cooking School, founded two years later.) In 1878, she gave lectures on cookery at nearby Lasell Seminary for Young Women, Auburndale (Newton), Massachusetts, and also at Miss A.C. Morgan’s Boarding and Day School for Young Ladies, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The same year, her second book, Camp Cookery: How to Live in Camp, was published in Boston.

During the summer of 1878, Parloa travelled to Europe, where she studied English and French culinary practice firsthand. Her observations at the South Kensington and the Board Schools in London inspired her next book, First Principles of Household Management and Cookery: A Text-Book for Schools and Families, published in 1879. That same year, the Women’s Education Association of Boston provided a subvention of $100 to establish The Boston Cooking School. Its first teacher was Joanna Sweeney, who taught basic cooking classes; Maria Parloa was engaged in giving regular lectures on more sophisticated topics. She prepared the text for Miss Parloa’s New Cook Book: A Guide to Marketing and Cooking, published in 1880. Although Miss Parloa’s school and her lectures at the Boston Cooking School were both top-rated, they were not financially rewarding. In 1882, she closed her school, left Boston, and moved to New York City. In November 1882, she opened Miss Parloa’s School of Cooking at 222 East Seventeenth Street. Here, in addition to the regular courses of instruction during the day, Miss Parloa also offered free instruction to “immigrant girls” in the evening.