This essay describes how the modern cookbook and recipe structure we know today emerges from its adolescent form in the early republic and argues that American notions of “good taste” are foregrounded in a transatlantic economic system. As a textual object, the cookbook functions in a number of registers: it creates a distinct American identity that is based on a value system; it equates eating with virtue and nation-building that develop notions of taste and taste-making; and it is predicated on a transatlantic system of production. Focusing on the ingredient list and accompanying paratextual elements of a recipe can illuminate a broader story of how slave labor in the Caribbean contributes to an early American culinary and cultural identity.