The Dixie Cook-Book

“The best is none too good.” Southern family receipts gathered across generations and printed in Atlanta in 1883 — and, in the same volume, everything else a household was expected to know: the laundry, the sick-room, dressmaking, babies, and a year's bill of fare.

About the Book

1883Published
Estelle Woods Wilcox (ed.)Author
1319Receipts

The Dixie Cook-Book was compiled from “the treasured family collections of many generations of noted housekeepers” and supplemented by recipes contributed by well-known ladies of the South. This is the revised edition, published in Atlanta by L. A. Clarkson & Company.

Like most household books of its day it reaches far past the kitchen: bread-making and cake-making sit alongside chapters on the laundry, dressmaking at home, the care of babies, medical receipts, and a full year's bill of fare.

It is also a document of the post-Reconstruction South, and its language reflects that; where the text carries period racial language it is left exactly as printed, with an editor's note.

This digital edition is built from a dual-engine OCR, reconciled page by page, one receipt to a page.

This site reproduces the complete text of the original 1883 edition, digitized page by page from the original printing. The book is in the public domain.

Rights & ReuseThe complete text of The Dixie Cook-Book (1883) is in the public domain in the United States — like all works published before 1928 — and is free to read, download, quote, teach from, and reuse. This digital edition (its transcription, restored images, and site design) is © 2026 PhotoOpAI, and any editorial commentary we add is clearly marked as ours; the underlying public-domain text carries no such restriction.