The particular emphasis on varieties of seafood in The New England Cook Book, including specific recipes for cod, halibut, striped and sea bass, black fish, shad, salt cod, fish cakes, lobsters and crabs, "scollops," eels, clams, and oysters easily identifies the book's origins. It also contains almost 300 recipes for a broad range of dishes and ingredients from soup to nuts, as well as an entire section of seventy-five "miscellaneous receipts and observations useful to young housekeepers" that includes all manner of advice for making soap, cleaning carpets, extracting stains from cotton goods, driving away various kinds of household vermin, and more. According to the author, "the mode of cooking is such as is generally practiced by good notable Yankee housekeepers . . . It is intended for all classes of society and embracing both the plainest and richest cooking."

This edition of New England Cook Book was reproduced by permission from the volume in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded in 1812 by Isaiah Thomas, a Revolutionary War patriot and successful printer and publisher, the Society is a research library documenting the life of Americans from the colonial era through 1876. The Society collects, preserves, and makes available as complete a record as possible of the printed materials from the early American experience. The cookbook collection includes approximately 1,100 volumes.