The renewed interest in authentic American cuisine has led many publishers recently to issue facsimile editions of old classics. Read one after the other, they provide a fascinating view on the evolution of American cooking in the 19th century, from the richness and variety of postcolonial country fare, to the codified blandness of early 20th-century city cooking. The first of those books, chronologically, is The Virginia House-Wife by Mary Randolph (South Carolina, $14.95) first published in 1824.This facsimile edition provides the reader with an excellent introduction and appendix by Karen Hess, who explains how the Southern wives managed their kitchen and why their cookery differed so soon and so drastically from the bland cooking of New England. The recipes themselves, coming from a woman who had been famous for her lavish hospitality before "a change in fortune," are extremely interesting in their variety. Here we find how to roast woodcock, wild duck, and rabbit. There are three recipes for calf s head, and some for hare soup, stewed carp, and skewered eels. Of course, the reader will find here also classics which have survived modernism, like "ochra soup," custards, pudding, and "nice biscuits." Twenty-one years later, Elizabeth Ellicott Lea published her Domestic Cookery(Pennsylvania, facsimile of the fifth edition, $20). In his very interesting introduction, William Woys Weaver explains how this woman, bred in Maryland, married in Delaware, and after some years settled with her family on a Maryland farm. She was influenced in her cooking not only by her Quaker upbringing, but also by the cuisine of Tidewater and that of Pennsylvania. This is still country cooking, in days when husbandry was an art, and no good housewife would discard a pig's foot or a calf s brain. From Pennsylvania, probably, come many recipes for scrapple, souse, sausages, and the like, besides more classic fare and instructions to corn or pickle various meats and fish. Mrs. Lea adds to this cookery a useful chapter of "miscellaneous receipts" where she gives directions to "wash Calicoes," take spots out of mahogany, make shoes waterproof, or take ink out of linen (no recipe for wine stains, alas, since this is a Quaker cookbook). Eventually, those independent, strong-minded, and energetic women moved to cities. Their cooking evolved, as we can see in The Atlanta Exposition Cookbook (Georgia, $12). First published in 1895 as a souvenir of the Woman's Building at the Cotton States and International Exposition, this is a precursor of today's Junior League cookbooks. All the recipes were contributed by members of the agriculture and horticulture committee of the fair. The long, fastidious cooking of the plantation kitchen is shortened wherever possible. There are even shortcuts: here the reader is instructed to use "the sauce that comes in a can." Instructions, measures, and cooking times are much more precise, probably because the contributors were far less experienced cooks than their grandmothers and also, of course, because ingredients had to be bought at stores instead of coming off the land. The fare becomes more dainty, with Charlotte Russe, Swiss Biscuit, Balaklava Nectar, Coquille de Volaille, or Patties au Salpicon. Game is on the way out, and there are many fewer recipes for variety meat. Taste is beginning to be codified. We find here, for example, a revealing list of which sauce or accompaniment "should" (a should which reads like a must) be served with each meat or fish. Still, it is elegant fare and particularly interesting to read when one remembers that this book was published only one year before Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cookbook, the first wide-ranging, popular treatise on urban cooking in the United States. Last on our list is The Settlement Cookbook (Hugh Lauter Levin, distributed by Scribner, $12. 95), a facsimile of the 1903 edition of this volume compiled by the women of a Settlement House in Milwaukee. How far we are from the previous books! This is not lady's cookery, of course, since the immigrants coming to the Settlement House were working people. Therefore, the fare is solid, filling, full of potatoes, and most of the time rather uninspired, with the exception of the "company dishes" called Entrees or Chafing Dishes, where there are a surprising number of recipes for lobster. Of interest too are the many recipes contributed by German and Jewish settlers, from matzo balls and Hasenpfeffer to Kuchen and a good array of tortes. The 20th century begins to appear here. The authors provide a whole chapter on ice-cream, sherbets, and frozen puddings. More surprising, the very first page of the book is devoted to the nutritional value of various foods. Since it was published, The Settlement Cookbookhas sold two million copies. For that reason alone, it should be in every collection on American cookery.