JCPLA Reader's Advisory Roundtable: Cookbooks

Our next meeting will be Wednesday, February 13^th at 9am at the GARDENDALE LIBRARY to discuss Fiction of Choice.

What a treat (pun SO intended)! Our meeting today was for the discussion of cookbooks. Not only did we all leave with some good ideas, but we also got to see some of the outstanding vintage/rare cookbooks in the Southern History department of the Birmingham Public Library downtown. Cookbooks proclaim their utility in their very name, but did you also know that they are useful for genealogists and historians? True story. Mary Anne found a great article for us that appeared in Vol. 8 #10 (pg. 3) of Yore Lore, the newsletter of the Baldwin County (AL) Genealogical Society titled “Genealogy from a….Cookbook?”

The items from BPL’s vintage/rare collection that we were privileged to see and handle include:

Cooking with a “Southern” Flair---The Vintage and Historic Cookbooks of the Southern History Department

Cookbooks can be valuable sources of historic, genealogical, and literary information. Sometimes they can even be used for cooking!

Here are some examples of cookbooks from our Southern History Department:

Civil War recipes : receipts from the pages of Godey'sLady's Book

Compiled and edited by Lily May Spaulding and John Spaulding

Godey’s Lady’s Book was a 19^th-century magazine that dealt with everything from food to fashion. An interesting aspect of this cookbook is that, as the editors point out, some “army” recipes are included; food shortages forced soldiers to be creative if they were to have anything to eat at all. Or there’s the attitude toward oatmeal: today it’s a health food, but then it was seen as only good for very small children or for invalids.

The Kentucky housewife by Lettice Bryan ; with a new introduction by Bill Neal

The original edition was from 1839 and contains “nearly thirteen hundred full receipts.” Mrs. Bryan’s introduction urges us to “shun the deleterious practices of idleness, pride, and extravagance, recollecting that neither of them constitutes the lady . . . examine frequently your cupboard and other household furniture, kitchen, smokehouse, and cellar, to see that every thing is in its proper place . . .”

Mme.Bégué's recipes of old New Orleans Creole cookery by Mme. Elizabeth Kettenring Bégué

Bégué’s was a famous restaurant in 19^th-century New Orleans. It is referenced in the novel Saratoga Trunk by Edna Ferber; the beautiful Clio Dulaine insists on having breakfast in the restaurant because her mother has described it to her so many times during their exile in France.

Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery

Transcribed by Karen Hess with historical notes and copious annotations

Here’s some more of the full title: “ . . .being a Family Manuscript curiously copied by an unknown Hand sometime in the seventeenth century, which was in her Keeping from 1749, the time of her Marriage to Daniel Custis, to 1799, at which time she gave it to Eleanor Parke Custis, her granddaughter, on the occasion of her Marriage to Lawrence Lewis.” Some of the recipes and instructions could have been handed d own from the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras: e.g. “A Creame With Snowe” that is very similar to a recipe in an English cookbook from 1545.

Successful canning and preserving: practical hand book for schools, clubs, and home use

By Ola Powell Malcolm

If your grandmother canned vegetables or made jams and jellies, she may have learned how from a book very much like this one. This edition is from 1930; the original publication date was 1917.

Detailed instructions plus lots of wonderful period photography and diagrams.

The modern housewife, or, ménagère : comprising nearly one thousand receipts for the economic and judicious preparation ofevery meal of the day, with those of the nursery and sick room, and minute directions for family management in all its branches

By Alexis Soyer

Modern . . . for 1850. A truly exhaustive (in all senses of the word) resource.

Culinary crinkles : tested recipes by the ladies of the Church of the Advent ; compiled by Mitylene Owen McDavid; Published by Unit No. 2 of the Women's Guild, Church of the Advent, c1919.

Check out the directions on “Husbands—How to Cook Them.”

La cuisine creole. A collection of culinary recipes from leading chefs and noted Creole housewives, who have made New Orleans famous for its cuisine.

This collection was compiled by author Lafcadio Hearn, known for his writing about New Orleans where he lived for ten years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lafcadio_Hearn

The Williamsburg art of cookery; or, Accomplish'd gentlewoman's companion: being a collection of upwards of five hundred of the most ancient & approv'd recipes in Virginia cookery ... And also a table of favorite Williamsburg garden herbs ... By Mrs. Helen Bullock.

A collection of recipes known to have been used in Virginia in the 1700s and 1800s. It has been reprinted many times---page through some of it here:

http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Williamsburg_Art_of_Cookery.html?id=nSWgd6HPB54C

Mobile cook book compiled by the Ladies Aid Society of Government Street Presbyterian Church. Mobile, Ala. : Patterson & Hawes, Power Print, c1884.

Contains a recipe for “Brain Cakes.” Talk about being thrifty and using every part of the animal!

Also many seafood recipes, as might be expected in a port city on the Gulf of Mexico.

The Savannah cook book; a collection of the old fashioned receipts from colonial kitchens; collected and edited by Harriet Ross Colquitt; with an introduction by Ogden Nash and decorations by Florence Olmstead.

From the introduction by poet Ogden Nash:

“Pilgrim’s Progress is a good book, and so, I am told, is Deuteronomy,

But neither is to be compared with this epic of gastronomy . . .”

If your cookbook rates an intro by Ogden Nash, you have arrived. Check out the entry on the Take One Cookbook blog, complete with a recipe for Chatham Artillery Punch. Try it if you dare:

http://takeonecookbook.blogspot.com/2008/07/savannah-cook-book-by-harriet-ross.html

As a co-worker put it, “not for people who have liver or insulin . . . challenges.”

That’s only a small sample of our cookbooks---come and browse. Let us know how your cooking turns out. And if you write a cookbook, donate a copy to the BPL collection!

Here are the books the rest of us brought to the table:

Weight Loss Surgery Cookbook for Dummies by Brian K. Davidson, David Fouts, and Karen Meyers.

This book is super useful on a couple of fronts. Not only are the recipes healthy and nutritious, they are small batch. For those of us (and I’m mostly speaking of myself) who may have difficulty reducing recipes, small batch recipes are great but hard to find in regular cookbooks. Since this cookbook is designed for people who’ve had bariatric surgery, the batch size is perfect. There’s even a section in the back for cooking for one or two people. Desserts and appetizers are featured as well. In addition to the recipes, there is also valuable pre- and post-surgery lifestyle advice and information which I have found invaluable. Overall, a great book on many levels.

Holley, Emmet O’Neal

The Meatless Gourmet’s Favorite Recipes from Around the World by Bobbie Hinman

Samuel, BPL Business/Science/Technology

Lidia’s Family Table: More Than 200 Fabulous Recipes to Enjoy Every Day, With Wonderful Ideas for Variations and Improvisations by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich

Samuel, BPL Business/Science/Technology

The Auburn Cookbook by Fariss Prickett (c1969)

Gina, Gardendale

May It Please the Palate: The Volunteer Lawyers Programs Bench & Bar Legally Delicious Recipes by the Alabama State Bar Volunteer Lawyers Program

Gina, Gardendale

Martha Stewart’s Cooking School: Lessons and Recipes for the Home Cook by Martha Stewart

Patrick, Leeds

Paleo Comfort Foods: Homestyle Cooking for a Gluten-Free Kitchen by Julie & Charles Mayfield