Just released! Northern Comfort: The New England Baking Tradition by Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald (New York University Press, 2026). Find it on Bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and at your local bookseller!
In Northern Comfort, award-winning food historians Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald offer a rare blend of lively culinary history and tempting historical recipes, adapted for the modern kitchen. Northern Comfort joins the pleasure of historical discovery with the kind of culinary exploration that excites adventurous cooks and baking enthusiasts. For example, learning that colonial resistance leaders like Paul Revere and the British customs officials who were their adversaires both dined on luxurious savory pies leads naturally to a recipe for Revolutionary-era Ham and Chicken Pie. Though created by a Loyalist, it's the kind of dish Patriots relished, too. Yet this delectable pie is no mere historical curiosity--it's also a showy and delicious centerpiece for today's table. In a sweeter vein, the Civil War-era White Mountain Cake, one of the first modern layer cakes, is accompanied by a story linking its name to the early days of New Hampshire's White Mountains tourist industry. This cake is bound to find a place on the list of bakers' favorites.
At a recent talk, Stavely and Fitzgerald were urged by an audience member to "start a movement" to revive the New England culinary tradition as it really was. In that spirit, they offer readers and cooks Northern Comfort: The New England Baking Tradition.
Praise for Northern Comfort
"Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald . . . are the perfect guides through the rich and fascinating food culture of New England. . . . [providing] intimate historical portraits of the way New Englanders baked, ate, and lived." ~"10 Great Nonfiction Titles to Read in November," Literary Hub
"our best historians of foodways . . . have now entered the kitchen" ~Blake Perkins, Petits Propos Culinaires
"utterly captivating exploration of that most uplifting of the culinary arts."~Sam Bilton, Comfortably Hungry Podcast
A Taste of Northern Comfort: The New England Baking Tradition
From the headnote to White Mountain Cake (1864), in Northern Comfort: Mrs. Knight's 1864 White Mountain cake may or may not be the earliest recipe for the dish in print. A White Mountain cake purportedly dating from 1858 (attributed to Mrs. John Beardslee of Little Falls, New York) appears in Famous Old Receipts, a heavily nostalgic compilation published in 1906. In 1859, Harriet Beecher Stowe mentions "the great Mont-Blanc . . . cake, with its snowy glaciers of frosting." However, this cake, with its French form of the name, is not a layer cake but rather a loaf cake and therefore doesn't constitute evidence of the emergence of White Mountain layer cake by this time. Mrs. Knight may indeed have been the earliest in this particular field.
You'll find the recipe for White Mountain Cake, adapted from Mrs. Knight, in Northern Comfort!
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