Category Archives: Autumn 2024

“To a Lady of any delicacy”: A visual exploration of the sway of English dining etiquette on early American identity

By Jennifer Wells

Gilbert Stuart, Abigail Adams (c. 1810-1815), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

In the summer of 1784, Abigail Adams sailed for London to join her husband as the wife of the first Ambassador of the United States to Britain. In her diary, she confessed, “With the best accommodations [the voyage] will be dreadfull, to a Lady of any delicacy.” She bemoaned the ship’s drab lodgings and noted that her silver porringer was the only cup or bowl in sight. She also complained in a letter that the ship’s Black cook had “no more knowledge of cookery than a savage; nor any kind of order in the distribution of his dishes, but hickeltapickelta [higgledy piggledy].” She criticized his supposed missteps on course order, grumbling, “on they come with a leg of pork all Brisly, a Quarter of an hour after a pudding, or perhaps a pair of roast fowls first of all, and then will follow one by one a peice of Beaf and when dinner is nearly compleated a plate of potatoes.”

Paul Revere, Porringer (c. 1760). Image Credit: The Met, New York. 

Adams’s frustrations reveal the fledgling nation’s distinctions in race and class and indicate the significance of mealtime rituals to elite and aspiring Americans. Her anecdote makes clear that dinner was not the place for experimental expositions or risk-taking jaunts but a choreographed performance, with every detail scrutinized. For Americans like Adams, sophistication materialized through the precise ordering of ingredients and synchronized flow of dishes. 

In the nascent shine of independence, print culture celebrating American distinctness flourished. Americans juxtaposed their supposed virtue with the corruption and follies of Europe, but their claims of superiority belied deep insecurities. Because much of Europe, particularly England, regarded the fledgling nation as a provincial backwater, white Americans searched for ways to establish themselves as cultural equals in the eyes of their former kinsmen. Their desire for validation manifested in part through the emulation of English standards of etiquette that appeared in early American cookbooks.

Front piece and Title Page to Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (London: Printed by L. Wangford, c. 1777). Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons. 
The Art of Cookery constantly lambasted so-called French extravagance while including French recipes in her Cookbook. Note, for example, Chapter III: “How expensive a French Cook’s Sauce is.” 

Colonists in British North America had long consumed English cookbooks, devouring rhetoric extolling the virtues of honest English fare when compared to French lavishness. Their popularity on both sides of the Atlantic tells of long-simmering obsessions with self-image and station within shifting social hierarchies. Manners, clothing, household furnishings, and table settings became markers of rank during the early modern period, and markets emerged for printed works to help readers traverse the fluctuating landscape. Cookbooks arose to aid housewives and housekeepers in their quest to project posh. 

Directions for a Grand Table, 1st Course and 2nd Course to Elizabeth Raffald, The Experienced English Housekeeper (Manchester: Printed by J. Harrop, 1769), Google Books. 

Social climbers throughout the British Empire believed that the correct execution of politeness distinguished the well-bred from the low-born, materializing in countless small ways, especially at the dinner table. Elizabeth Raffald’s The Experienced English Housekeeper (1769) enjoyed enormous success with its print life spanning nearly five decades, including an edition of  The Experienced English Housekeeper printed in Philadelphia in 1818. Raffald promised “Economy with Neatness and Elegance.” Her index provided “Directions for a Grand Table” and sketched out course arrangements to “make a pretty appearance” and “be entertaining to the Company.” She also noted what serving dishes to use and when, such as “Sweetmeats and Fruits dished up in China Dishes, or Fruit Baskets,” and added tips for garnishing. By heeding Raffald’s advice, the upwardly mobile strived to gain entry into privileged spheres.

Roberts’s index included extensive directions for meal service, see pages 42 to 64. Index to Robert Roberts, The House Servants Directory (1827), (Boston: Munroe and Frances, 1827), MSU Libraries. Image Credit: MSU Libraries, East Lansing. 
Henry Sargent, The Dinner Party (c. 1821), MFA Boston. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

After Independence, Americans sought approval by mastering preset codes of civility. While images rarely appeared in American cookbooks before the late-1830s, an emphasis remained on table settings as representations of prestige in and of society. Maria Rundell’s American Domestic Cookery (1823) (a revised version of an English cookbook for an American audience by the same author titled New System of Domestic Cookery (1807)) stated that an elegant table “gives respectability to her who presides.” Mary Randolph’s The Virginia House-wife (1824) affirmed, “a dinner justly calculated for the company, and consisting for the greater part of small articles, correctly prepared, and neatly served up” creates a “pleasing appearance” for all in attendance. Robert Roberts’s The House Servants Directory (1827), one of the earliest books written by a Black American in the United States, had explicit instructions on “Regulations for the dinner table,” “Dinner on the table,” “The first course removed,” “Second course removed,” and “Placing on the desert.” And Eliza Leslie’s The House Book (1844) dedicated nearly fifty pages to “The Dining-Room:—Table Furniture, Waiting on Table, Carving, &c.” Henry Sargent’s The Dinner Party (1821) illustrates that sweet spot Americans craved—quiet luxury through tasteful display.

Half a Calf’s Head to Frances Harriet Green, The Housekeeper’s Book (Philadelphia, William Marshall & Co., 1837). Image Credit: HathiTrust. 

 Frances Harriet Green’s The Housekeeper’s Book (1837) was one of the first American cookbooks to include multiple illustrations. Her images focused on presentation and performance, notably the skills required for carving and serving meats. With seats at either end of the table, hosts and hostesses were expected to perform the task in front of a crowd. When dishes like calf’s head were placed before them, all eyes met theirs in eager anticipation. The show could turn into a debacle if done without finesse. As Eliza Leslie’s The Cook’s Own Book, and Housekeeper’s Register (1840) remarked, “nothing can be more disagreeable to one of a sensitive disposition, than to behold a person, at the head of a well-furnished board, hacking the finest joints, and giving them the appearance of having been gnawed by dogs.” American cookbooks aimed to spare such humiliation by incorporating images with step-by-step instructions. 

Turkey for Roasting,” to Frances Harriet Green, The Housekeeper’s Book (Philadelphia, William Marshall & Co., 1837). Image Credit: HathiTrust.

Green also provided readers with the “most approved” method for presenting roasted turkey through a tale of caution. Green recounted that she was once invited to a dinner where the unappetizing bird was “brought to the table with the head on as well as the feet.” She tsked, “such trussing is exceedingly ugly and altogether unworthy of a good cook.” Her disapproving tone indicates the implications of not following her suggestions—an accusation of lousy cooking and inept hosting that verged on buffoonery.

Green’s text followed precedents set by English cookbooks as authoritative sources that set culinary standards and assuaged nervous readers. Her comments also reveal how following precise procedures led to assumptions about status. While adhering to polite culture opened opportunities for self-elevation for some, it simultaneously barred others who did not conform to its exacting standards. 

America’s newcomer status meant that many of its inhabitants wanted to prove their worth to themselves and the wider world. Cookbooks and other prescriptive English texts had set guidelines for taste long before the first shots rang out at Lexington and Concord. During the early national period, Americans continued to purchase English cookbooks and began to author ones of their own based on the English model. While Abigail Adams might have wanted to adopt a stars-and-stripes attitude toward the early republic’s distinctness from England, the proof was in the pudding—the mother country’s parameters of decorum largely dictated America’s cultural norms of the time.


Jennifer Wells is a Ph.D. candidate in History at Texas A&M University specializing in British colonial North America, the American Revolution, and the Early American Republic during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Her research explores the social ambiguities of the urban South following the Revolution, a transformative period when questions of national identity and belonging swirled. Her dissertation studies the petition of Christopher McPherson, a free man of color who attempted to repeal an ordinance prohibiting Black Americans from owning or riding as passengers in carriages in Richmond, Virginia. Using the petition as a lens into the early national period, she investigates veteran affairs, the influence and limits of polite culture on class and race, educational reforms, apocalyptic prophets, and the history of early American psychiatric institutions. You can read a recent article she wrote about Christopher McPherson here.

Reference List:

Berg, Maxine. Luxury and Pleasure: In Eighteenth-Century Britain. Oxford: University Press, 2005. 

Bickham, Troy. “Defining Good Food: Cookery Book Illustrations in Britain.” Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies, 31 (2008): 473-489. 

Bickham, Troy. Eating the Empire: Food and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain. London, Reaktion Books, Ltd., 2020. 

Breen, T.H. “Baubles of Britian’: The American and Consumer Revolutions of the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present, 119 (1988) 73-104. 

Lehmann, Gilly. The British Housewife: Cookery Books, Cooking and Society in Eighteenth Century Britain. Prospect Books: Totnes, 2003. 

Theophano, Janet. Eat My Words: Reading Women’s Lives through the Cookbooks They Wrote. New York: Palgrave, 2002. 

Yokota, Kariann. Unbecoming British: How Revolutionary America Became a Postcolonial Nation. Oxford: Oxford University, 2011.

 

Portrayal of Women in North Carolina Kitchen-Related Advertising

By Simone Gillespie

In an attempt to promote the modernization of homes and the switch to electric, in the first half of the twentieth century, North Carolina power companies ran advertisements that focused on the housewife and her work in the kitchen. In both the imagery and language of these advertisements, housewives are portrayed as hospitable servants to those within their households. Occasionally the advertisements leave room for activities outside of the home, but they primarily allude to how their products help to alleviate the effort and time spent completing domestic tasks. To showcase the breadth of advertisements produced by these power companies, the ads examined for this article were published in North Carolina newspapers, cookbooks, yearbooks, and city directories between 1915 to 1965. 

Some advertisements used a personified lightning bolt, Reddy Kilowatt, as a stand-in for the invisible electrical current powering new kitchen appliances. Created in 1926 (though he didn’t appear in NC until 1935) Reddy was the mascot for power companies across the country during the twentieth century and is a clever advertising ploy that distracts the reader from the reality of the situation. For example, an ad printed in The Tryon Daily Bulletin by Duke Power told readers: “With Reddy’s help she prepared 20 meals a week, tidies 6 rooms daily, keeps clothes clean and in order for 4 people.” Giving this personification of electricity a name and credit attempts to negate the work completed by the housewife; it creates an illusion that she has a second person helping her complete tasks, despite the fact that it is still only her doing the work. 

The language used in power company’s ads further serves as a reflection of the attitudes toward domestic life in the first half of the century. Ads often used language such as “my wife,” “she,” “your wife,” etc., never addressing the woman herself, only the man. It wasn’t until World War II, when women took charge of their household while their husbands were at war, that the advertisements began to shift their language, referring to “her money,” which did not free the housewives from their homemaking duties, but gave them some household autonomy. Later ads refer to the housewife’s budget,which was allotted from her husband’s overall household budget. 

Positioning women as being a servant was ingrained in society from a young age. One Southern Public Utilities ad printed in 1925 in The Black and Gold, the yearbook of Richard J. Reynolds High School, read “An Electric Range in your home means a Cleaner Kitchen and a Happy Wife.” This language presumed that most male students would shortly thereafter find a wife. Another ad, run by Duke Power in 1947, focused on “the older school girls” not having to “hurry straight home from school to help mother” with household tasks thanks to an electric oven. 

Many of these advertisements reference the “drudgery” of the kitchen. Drudgery – “dull, irksome, and fatiguing work” –  is the common enemy in ads promoting modern kitchen conveniences; drudgery may mean maintaining fires, washing dishes, or boiling water. These advertisements show housewives either partaking in or being relieved of the drudgery of domestic labor. Some harken back to days of the past while others show modern housewives with big smiles in their electric kitchens because, according to Southern Public Utilities, “it enables you to remain fresh and sweet for the family,” and to Duke Power, access to electricity “add[s] so much to her charm, health and disposition.” 

One Duke Power ad implies that if a husband provides his wife with an electric kitchen, she will be happy and healthy, a “Rosy Cheeked Smiling Wife” freed from “kitchen drudgery and worry.” Another boasts a “Recipe for a HEALTHY.. HAPPY WIFE!” In this ad, the recipe is laid out as follows:  “Plenty of time for outdoor recreation, for social activities, time to spend with her children and relief from kitchen drudgery and worry!,” all provided by a modern electric range. Even though these advertisements craft a narrative of  less time being spent in the kitchen for the wives and mothers to do other things and lead healthier and happier lives, they still position domestic work as the wife or mother’s duty. 

In the 1930s Duke Power Company ran a series of ads titled “Lovable wives and livable kitchens.” One installment of this series, printed in the April 15, 1937 edition of The Yadkin Ripple, shows a husband and wife in an embrace in their kitchen. The opening line reads, “Romance lives again for the happy wife who discovers the chance of kitchen drudgery.” There is an implication that if the husband opts to provide his wife with these new kitchen appliances, she will have more time to spend with him romantically, even sexually. The ad goes on to implore the husband to “Give your wife freedom from kitchen toils–help her to keep that youthful sweetness–let romance live again.” It is not hard to read between the lines here and draw the connection that sex may be in the husband’s future should he gift his wife with an electric kitchen. 

Beyond the heteronormative household structures reinforced and encouraged by these ads, I feel that it must be acknowledged that in each of these ads where images of people appeared, only conventionally attractive white people were showcased– further demonstrating the world in which they were created. Through the imagery and language used in these advertisements, a recipe was developed, tweaked, and perfected over time. In a sense, these ads, when collected and shown together, create a recipe book focusing on how to be a loving and hospitable housewife. Just as recipes throughout time reflect the modernization of kitchens across America, so do these “recipes” reflect on how to be a good housewife. Morphing from gas to electric, fresh to frozen, the kitchen and ingredients have changed, but the housewife’s duties and ties to the kitchen have remained the same. These recipes for hospitable housewives are not clear cut instructions, but are woven into the bylines and takeaways of each advertisement, reflecting societal norms and further instilling these heteronormative beliefs in the reader.


Simone Gillespie, an early career librarian and archivist, is a two-time graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, receiving her BA in History and English in 2020 and her MS in Library Science in 2024. Her research and archival interests include LGBTQ+ history, Southern foodways, community archives, archival access, Americana, and sports history.

Mellorine, a “Time-Honored” Recipe?: FDA Food Standards as “Recipes” for Industrial Foods

By Xaq Frohlich

What exactly is the purpose of a recipe? Much has been written about the important role of recipes in passing knowledge across generations, building communities, serving as an expressive media, and functioning as scripts that discipline the untrained cook or promote a companies’ product.

But what happens when the idea of “recipe” is used to regulate mass-produced foods? This question was at the heart of a dramatic shift in U.S. food regulation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) when in 1973 it introduced a food standard of identity for “mellorine” – a frozen dessert that replaced dairy fat with vegetable fats. The 1973 Mellorine standard signaled a reversal of decades of federal food policies and ushered in a new era in the marketing of novel industrial foods.1

An FDA map from 1958 indicating which states were authorized to manufacture and sell Mellorine.

The FDA’s food standards system began with the 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA), which charged the FDA with creating “standards of identity” for processed foods. Regulators likened FDA standards to recipes, noting, “The government has had difficulty in holding such articles as commercial jams and preserves and many other foods to the time-honored standards employed by housewives and reputable manufacturers.”2 The housewife’s recipe here symbolized wholesome, honest, and authentic food. FDA standards would protect consumers from “economic adulteration” – the practice of substituting cheaper ingredients in some industrial foods without informing buyers.

As the FDA began issuing standards of identity, it faced a fundamental challenge: What is a “time-honored” recipe for an industrial food? There were clear differences between how one bakes pies at home and how food manufacturers baked thousands of pies on an industrial scale. Companies and regulators would clash over whether definitions of conventional foods should incorporate new trends in food processing and new additives with unknown safety profiles.

The FDA soon grappled with an even more difficult question: how does one apply “time-honored” standards to regulating foods that had not previously existed? In 1941, for example, it created a standard for margarine, which had grown in popularity during World War II. Companies that created nonstandard foods were compelled to label them “imitation,” implying they were inferior to the “authentic” standard products.

A prime example of economic adulteration the FDA system was intended to prevent were “filled milk” products – dairy products reconstituted with non-dairy fats, often vegetable oils. The dairy industry lobbied hard against them, leading to the Filled Milk Act of 1923 and subsequent court decisions that effectively banned interstate sales of filled milk products. Mellorine, an ice cream substitute using vegetable oils instead of dairy fat, was an example of this. It was introduced into the U.S. market in the 1950s, but its sales were limited to only specific states, since it was prohibited by filled milk laws from interstate commerce.3

However, in the 1950s and 1960s, scientific understanding of nutrition was evolving, particularly around fats and heart health. The “diet-heart thesis” began to gain traction, suggesting that diets high in saturated fats (common in dairy products) might increase the risk of heart disease. This led to growing interest in low-fat and vegetable-oil-based alternatives to traditional dairy products. The FDA found itself in a difficult position. Its food standards system, designed to protect consumers from adulteration, was now potentially hindering the development of products that might offer health benefits. 

The agency’s stance against “imitation” products was increasingly at odds with emerging nutritional science and changing consumer preferences, and the food industry became more vocal in its criticisms. In 1963, the food industry journal, Food Processing, ran a series of opinion pieces about the “imitation controversy,” inviting legal and industry experts to explain weaknesses and inconsistencies in the FDA’s approach to imitation foods. The articles included striking political cartoons that satirized the FDA’s imitation label as outdated and a barrier to product innovation, joking about the irony of having to market “superior imitation margarine.” Just three years later a court ruled against the FDA’s seizure of a safflower-based “imitation margarine,” sold as Demi.4 Demi had been developed to capitalize on popular interest in the diet-heart thesis and new markets for low-saturated fat foods. Companies were now seriously exploring the feasibility of marketing imitation products as better than standard ones. Even the dairy industry was beginning to recognize the appeal of dairy substitutes.

A cartoon questioning the government’s definition of “imitation” as opposed to that of consumers.

In 1973, the FDA made a pivotal shift in its approach, introducing new rules for voluntary nutrition information labeling intended as a shift away from setting food standards. In a highly symbolic move, the FDA also published a standard for mellorine, signaling its openness to non-traditional, novel foods designed with health considerations in mind.

The FDA’s “recipe” for mellorine read like a technical specification for a frozen dessert designed to accommodate the flexibility of modern food technology and new dietary trends. It gave precise measurements for key nutritional qualities like fat and protein content, and included detailed instructions for fortification, pasteurization, and labeling. The ingredients it listed, “milk-derived nonfat solids,” “animal or vegetable fat,” “nutritive carbohydrate sweetener,” and unspecified “flavoring ingredients,” were deliberately generic and non-specific to allow for a wide variety of company recipes and to protect their trade secret formulas.5

The mellorine standard represented a fundamental change in how the FDA viewed its role in food regulation. Rather than rigidly defining what foods should be, the agency was now focused on ensuring that consumers had accurate information about the foods they were buying.

This shift had several important implications. It opened the door for a wide range of new, reformulated foods. It changed the notion of what makes a food “authentic” or “pure.” It placed more emphasis on labeling as a means of consumer protection. It reflected a more nuanced understanding of public health, acknowledging that sometimes, non-traditional formulations might offer health benefits over “natural” products.

This new approach was not without critics. Some worried that it would lead to a proliferation of highly processed, artificial foods. It encouraged “nutritionism,” narrowly reducing food to its nutritional values, which scholars such as Gyorgy Scrinis have recently criticized as favoring processed foods over traditional ones.6 Others argued that the FDA’s focus on labeling instead of strict standards placed too much burden on consumers to understand complex nutritional information.

Despite these concerns, the FDA’s pivot away from rigid food standards and towards informational regulation has largely persisted to this day. Indeed, the FDA recently revisited its standard definition of “milk” to include plant-based alternatives, like soy and oat milk, that in recent decades have grown in popularity. The mellorine standard marked the beginning of an era where foods were increasingly seen not as fixed, traditional recipes, but as collections of ingredients and nutrients that can be modified and optimized for the latest consumer trend.

Xaq Frohlich is Associate Professor of History of Technology at Auburn University, and author of From Label to Table: Regulating Food in America in the Information Age (UC Press, 2013), a history of food policy at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration from food standards in the 1930s to informative labels today.


  1. Xaq Frohlich, From Label to Table: Regulating Food in America in the Information Age. University of California Press, 2023. ↩︎
  2. R. A. Merrill, and E. M. Collier Jr., “Like Mother Used to Make: An Analysis of FDA Food Standards of Identity,” Columbia Law Review 74 (1974): 561. ↩︎
  3. George J. Caspar, “The Legal Status of Vegetable Fats in Frozen Desserts,” Food, Drug, Cosmetic Law Journal Vo. 13, No. 5 (May 1968): 302-324. ↩︎
  4. H. P. Milleville, “The Imitation Controversy. How FDA’s Stand on Imitation STIFLES New Product Development,” Food Processing 24, no. 10 (October 1963): 73, 74. Michael Markel, “Imitation Controversy III. Faulty framework of the present law,” Food Processing 24, no. 12 (December 1963): 66. ↩︎
  5. “Mellorine, Establishment of Standard of Identity,” Federal Register Vol. 39, No. 144 (Thursday, July 25, 1974): 27128-27130. ↩︎
  6. Gyorgy Scrinis,“Sorry, Marge.” Meanjin-Carlton 61, no. 4 (2002): 108–15. Gyorgy Scrinis, Nutritionism: The Science and Politics of Dietary Advice. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. ↩︎

Cooking with Ketchup: Pictures from the Promotional Kitchen

By Jennifer McGillan

In 1957 H.J. Heinz and Co published 57 Prize Winning Recipes, a promotional single-product cookbook. As a historical document, it is a snapshot of the late 1950s American culinary landscape, offering insight into the ongoing evolution and diversification of the American palate in the mid-twentieth century. It also documents the tension generated as part of that diversification: throughout the cookbook recipes reflecting consumer familiarity and interest in dishes from culinary traditions that were previously “foreign,” such as Mexican, Chinese, and Italian food, are paired with illustrations that mock those same cultures and traditions. 

The front cover of the cookbook, 57 Prize-Winning Recipes from H. J. Heinz, Co.

57 Prize Winning Recipes aimed to put ketchup at the forefront of the cooking and eating experience, inviting cooks to reconsider its applications in the kitchen, and asking prospective diners to consider the reality of ketchup – its taste and texture  – writ large. The primary purpose of the cookbook is to sell Heinz ketchup to the public. As such, the recipes presented in the cookbook are intended for home cooks. They reflect prevailing cultural norms and trends, offer cooks alternatives to familiar standards, and celebrate culinary innovation, though using a limited palette, and for a very specific palate. 

As a home cook with an interest in vintage food, reading this cookbook is a wild ride. The recipes themselves are both intriguing and repulsive and  the illustrations are simultaneously lurid, offensive, and quaint. Like many vintage cookbooks, it invites a number of questions including: Who made this cookbook? Why? Were they serious or was it just a publicity stunt? Are any of these recipes any good?

About the cookbook

57 Prize Winning Recipes is a slender volume of only 32 pages, printed in color on clay (magazine) paper, bound with staples. This paper, which fuses to itself when it gets wet, is the greatest material challenge of working with the cookbook, as I discovered while cooking with my personal copy. As I carefully pulled the pages apart and patted them dry, I started to wonder: was this cookbook created to be seen, read, and talked about, but never used? Or was the paper a mistake made by people who sold food but didn’t cook?

There is no surviving documentation on creation and development of the cookbook in the H.J. Heinz Company records, but based on newspaper accounts, the recipes are most likely the result of two contests: one held in 1955, in which contestants submitted their own recipes, and one held in 1956, in which contestants submitted names for recipes created by Heinz. Unlike other cookbooks resulting from recipe contests, such as the Pillsbury Bake-off, the winners’ names are not attached to the recipes. Finding the names and stories of the contest winners for 57 Recipes is also part of my research on the cookbook.

Visually and stylistically, the cookbook is an overwhelming mish-mash, in which whimsical line drawings done in primary colors illustrating recipes mix with full color photographs of dishes that verge on garish and nauseating. (Our cataloger mostly-jokingly threatened to go on strike after she cataloged the library’s copy.)

In addition to the illustrations of the recipes themselves, the art in the cookbook reflects a tension between a progressive, internationally-flavored future, and a conservative, xenophobic present, communicating complicated messages of  acceptance and mockery in the same space. For example, the first illustration in the cookbook is a drawing of a chef with a tomato face on a human body, wearing a monocle and carrying a magic wand, evoking a classy, transformative, future-positive vibe. 

Meanwhile, only a few pages later, the illustrations for the Mexican and Chinese dishes are accompanied by a shrimp in a sombrero playing the ukulele, a shrimp with a Mandarin hat and a Fu Manchu mustache, and eggs with slanted eyes wearing Asian conical hats. While these images communicated clear racial stereotypes, not all of the images included in the cookbook function in the same way. Some of the illustrations employ imagery that is evocative of a country or culture using different visual forms.  The illustration for Chicken Cacciatore, for example, (p. 9) is a chicken playing a guitar on a gondolier and Texas Hot Eggs are accompanied by an egg dressed like a cowboy and wielding a whip (p. 15). When  read alongside one another, the racist and xenophobic illustrations provided for the other recipes are thus even more stark and jarring

Alongside the drawings are photographs of the dishes in full, saturated color. They are so vivid you can almost taste the ketchup, and there is a lot of ketchup. They are the least appetizing part of the whole publication. As part of my research, I cooked and photographed (and also ate) some of the dishes, to show what they looked like in a real-life, non-promotional context. 

The proof is in the crabcake

Reading and cooking from vintage recipes can be much like reading ancient poems and legends: a voyage of hope and occasionally perilous textual uncertainty that sometimes sends in joy.

In the case of 57 Recipes,  the recipes are cookable, and in some cases, delicious. Crab Biscayne (p. 11), with some minor alterations,  is now a regular part of my Thanksgiving and Christmas menus. I tried making it with tomato sauce and it is actually better with ketchup. The Spicy Pear Compote was also really good.

 I was selective with the dishes I chose to prepare, in order to avoid gratuitously wasting food. I chose dishes that I thought I could share, or that were easily cut down for one person. As my research on the contest winners progressed, I also focused on cooking recipes created by identifiable individuals.

Cooking with ketchup was paradoxically freeing. I was not expecting the results to be good, so I didn’t put any expectations on myself or my cooking skills. Techniques I learned in the process include: how to use a double boiler and the broiler, and how to bake a cake from scratch. Some tastes and textures were odd, but there was only one dish – Eggs Ample – where the ketchup turned out to be Too Much. 

Some examples:

Toledo Ham (uncooked): Overall 1st Prize Winner, 1955 Cook with Ketchup contest; original recipe by Marguerite Fortress of Toledo, OH.
Toledo Ham (uncooked): Overall 1st Prize Winner, 1955 Cook with Ketchup contest; original recipe by Marguerite Fortress of Toledo, OH.
Toledo Ham (cooked).
Spicy Pear Compote. Original author as yet unknown. 
Brazilian Dreams: Original author unknown; a personal “pizza” with ketchup and macademia nuts
Major League Rhubarb (uncooked): Overall 2nd Prize 1955 Cook with Ketchup contest; original recipe by Rosemary Rothschild of New York, NY.
Major League Rhubard (cooked).
Shrimp sandwich: Original author unknown.
Crab Biscayne (uncooked): Original author unknown.
Crab Biscayne (cooked).
Eggs Ample: 1st place in Eggs; original recipe by Evelyn Rose Peterson of Washington, DC. Contains eggs, mashed potatoes, ketchup and grated cheese.

Jennifer McGillan has been the Coordinator  of Manuscripts at Mississippi State University since 2015. She holds a BA in English from Davidson College (1997), a MLIS-Archives from the University of Pittsburgh (2003) and a JD from New York Law School (2012). Her research interests include 19th century legal history and enslaved persons, vintage cooking and recipes, “women’s work,” the various intersections of archives work and disability, and pirates.