Category Archives: Culinary History

Culinary History, Food and Drink, Summer 2026

Smashed Between the Plantain: Connecting to the Past and Future

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By Chris Cole and Caitlin Arens

Few foods are more deeply connected to Chicago’s Puerto Rican community than the jibarito, a steak sandwich layered with cheese, garlic aioli, lettuce, tomato, and onions between two flattened and fried green plantains. Born in Humboldt Park, the sandwich has become more than a neighborhood staple. It is a reminder that recipes evolve as communities move, adapt, and redefine tradition. The jibarito was developed by Juan C. Figueroa as an homage to a sandwich he read about in a Puerto Rican newspaper while dreaming up ideas for growing the business at his restaurant, Borinquen, that uses plantains as bread. While Borinquen no longer operates in Humboldt Park, the legacy lives on in the ways it has been adapted since. Nearly three decades later, that legacy continues not through imitation, but through reinterpretation as a new generation of chefs build on the sandwich’s history while bringing their own cultural experiences.

In a city known for its sandwiches – namely Italian beef and the famous Chicago-style hot dog – Chicago-born chef and restauranteur Josean Irizarry brings a contemporary approach to the beloved jibarito by combining the fried plantains with a smash burger. Irizarry’s inspiration is his Mexican mother, whose warmth, hospitality, and community-centered values are reflected in his Humboldt Park restaurant, Smash Jibarito. The comfort and nostalgia of weekend mornings spent watching cartoons with a bolillo (a savory football shaped bread of Mexican origin) stuffed with ham and beans in hand inspired Irizarry to create a similar feeling that embodies Mexican hospitality for his customers: 

“My mom’s Mexican, so she wasn’t really smashing burgers. But one thing I’ve been able to embody is how food is supposed to make you feel. Is it warm? Is it nostalgic? Can you relate to it?”

Image credit: Josean Irizarry ; Josean pictured here with his mother

Those early memories became the foundation for a restaurant that reflects both sides of Irizarry’s Puerto Rican and Mexican heritage, translating familiar flavors and feelings into something entirely of his own. Irzarry continues:

“The jibarito was a happy accident. I wasn’t thinking, ‘I want to create something controversial.’ I just wanted to make a burger, but I didn’t want to be cliché and say, ‘Here’s a Hispanic burger with avocado or queso on it.'”

As any artist knows, the process of creating is often influenced by multiple sources – one’s identity, external media, and one’s emotions. Irizarry’s idea emerged similar to how Figueroa’s did – except instead of a newspaper article, Irizarry found inspiration on social media:

“I saw somebody make a slider with a round pressed plantain and thought, ‘That would be cool for a burger bun.’ That’s when it clicked. As I’m here thinking, ‘Oh, I have a cool burger,’ the history that unraveled with that concept was really enlightening. It gave me a sense of responsibility.”

After some improvements (namely changing to a 80/20 blend of beef), Irizarry debuted the smash jibarito with an emphasis on it being a gluten free option. The initial response was skepticism – deeming the sandwich controversial due to its deep roots, which led Irizarry to dive deeper into the Puerto Rican side of his heritage: 

“I did not know the impact of that sandwich in our community. Once I understood that history, the question became: how do I help develop the future through this idea?”

His curiosity and learning only grew as he talked to more people and defined authenticity on his own terms through street festivals and music concerts, encouraging people to try it before judging it as a “gentrified sandwich.” As more people tried the sandwich and offered feedback, he started to recognize the threads connecting cultures that have long embraced plantains, including African, Dominican, and Latin American communities, each with their own culinary traditions and interpretations. Food as a bridgebuilder is what pushed his business forward: 

“Food has always been one of those things where we get to push the boundary. What I love about it is that it advances the culture, but it also gets people wondering, ‘What else could we do?’”

It was his current business partner, Sophia, who first amplified the smash jibarito on social media, because she was curious to try Irizarry’s vegetarian option. The video ended up going viral and changed the narrative completely. What had initially been dismissed online became an invitation for conversation. People who first questioned the sandwich began engaging with it on its own terms, illustrating how food often changes minds more effectively than debate alone. Irizarry described this journey:

“From Thursday, you know, we were getting a bunch of hey, we were getting a bunch of why that, why this? By Sunday, they were inviting me to the baptism. They were telling me, ‘yo, bro, great idea.’”

Image credit: Josean Irizarry

It’s this humble approach to feedback and commitment to community that Irizarry brings into everything, including the recently opened coffee and cocktail lounge, Caña, in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood. Named after the sugarcane plant and featuring local artists, he’s hoping the space can serve as a gathering place for all generations where they can dream up their own ideas that might evolve traditional foodways into contemporary adaptations: 

“If I could exemplify something that allows the next hundred people to say, ‘Yo, I could do that too,’ then we have a completely different environment moving into the next fifty years of food.”

Irizarry isn’t interested in creating the next fine dining restaurant because he wants the business to feed the  hearts and families of everyone who works there by providing enough business and low enough costs to keep it around. Since he started the business with zero dollars and an idea, he wants to be a guide to other young people who want to do the same: 

“I was just someone who liked something and pushed it and convinced everybody that it was good. But if I can exemplify something that allows the next generation to say, ‘I could do that too,’ that’s important.”

In this divided time where immigrant communities are threatened, there is no better path forward than sharing a meal together and connecting with our ancestors. Irizarry concludes:

“There was so much intersection between cultures throughout our history and ancestry. Now we’re seeing that come out through recipes and food. Food can actually bridge us together.”

Like the neighborhood that first gave it life, the jibarito remains what it has always been: not simply a recipe, but a living expression of Chicago’s Puerto Rican community and the generations that continue to shape it.

 

Culinary History, Libraries, Archives & Museums, Posts, Summer 2026

Tournez / Turn Page: Language, Memory, and Two Franco-American Recipe Scrapbooks

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By Rachel E. Church and Anna Faherty

Among the artifacts preserved in the Franco-American Collection at the University of Southern Maine is a curious set of two meticulously prepared recipe scrapbooks. These books contain both Franco-American and other popular recipes from the time period in which they were created. However, what makes these books particularly interesting is that one is entirely of French language magazine clippings and one of English language. They appear clean and unused and the creator rarely wrote in the margins except to tell us when to turn the page over – in English for the English book, and in French for the French book.

The “Franco” in the name of the “Franco-American Collection” refers to people who immigrated to the U.S. from Quebec and the Canadian Maritime Provinces. Materials at the Collection relate to this community in Lewiston-Auburn and other areas of Maine, and include but are not limited to: scrapbooks, oral histories, photographs, letters, and French language newspapers. The recipe scrapbooks in question bring together both the scrapbook and cookbook mediums, as well as both the French and English languages, in ways that speak to the wider body of documentation held at the archive and help us better understand the Franco-American experience.

The Prevost recipe scrapbooks: English language book on the left and French language on the right. Image Credit: Rachel E. Church

The English scrapbook features clipping from Ladies’ Home Journal from approximately 1937-1951. We can tell this because header information with the magazine name and issue dates remain, and there are many references to dates in advertisements on the backside of the recipe clippings. The clippings include a mix of French-Canadian, international, and American recipes, some labeled with “How America Lives.” While the French-language scrapbook includes almost exclusively French Canadian recipes, the English-language book’s recipes are more diverse in their national origins and include many that teach or highlight American cuisine and culture.

The French book’s origins were harder to determine because the edges where the magazine name and date would be had been cut off. However, the byline under many of the recipe columns reads: “Mme. Rose Lacroix Directrice de L’Institute Ménager de LA REVUE POPULAIRE et du SAMDEI.” We determined this referenced the French-Canadian magazine La Revue Populaire. A conversation with a Collection community member revealed that it was as ubiquitous as Ladies Home Journal for the local French-speaking community.

There were only two instances of printed dates in advertisements: one referencing an event from May 30 to June 10, 1949 and another mentioning “Depuis 1943,” “En 1950,” and, “plus tard le 15 avril, 1950…” (English translation: “Since 1943, “In 1950,” and “later on April 15, 1950…”). The Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec has full issues of La Revue Populaire online. Starting with these clues, we found 14 of our clippings in their archive. The issue dates span 1945-1951, overlapping with our English scrapbook which also stops in 1951. 

“Deux Menus à la Canadienne” (English translation: “Two Canadian-style Menus”) on page 32 of the November 1948 issue, as seen in Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, Gouvernement du Québec. Image Credit: Rachel E. Church

In the past, donations to the Collection may not have had corresponding accession paperwork. This seems to be the case with these scrapbooks, so it is difficult to trace their creator. Due to the label “Prevost” on each inside cover, it is likely that was the creator’s last name. After searching through Maine obituaries and cemetery records, we found at least 10 results of women by that name who were born between 1870-1925. As many materials at the Collection are donated by individuals local to Lewiston-Auburn, it is likely that this donor was as well. Two plausible options are Cora Mathieu Prevost and Therese Landry Prevost, the first and second wives, respectively, of Alban Prevost of Lewiston. The Mathieu family is known to have donated other material to the Collection, and Therese was born and raised in Quebec and had family there, likely having a strong connection with French-Canadian culture and language.

As Ellen Gruber Garvey explains in her book Writing with Scissors, women have created scrapbooks of curated information, including recipes, for nearly 200 years. Furthermore, Janet Theophano tells us that manuscript cookbooks, also called recipe books, go back even farther to at least the 17th century (8). These handmade cookbooks and domestic manuals were created by individuals, typically women, who compiled handwritten recipes alongside recipes clipped from media or shared by family and friends for their own use and/or to pass down to younger generations.

Of note, our books show no signs of use in the kitchen: no drips or stains, recipe alterations, or marginalia beyond “tournez / turn page,” evidence which Ken Albala identifies as “evidence that someone interacted directly with the text and actually cooked the recipe[s]” (230). This could be because their creator made them for her own use but then didn’t use them, or because she made them specifically to pass down to others who did not use them for cooking. 

That the two recipe scrapbooks are separated into two different languages leads us to believe that they may not have been for the maker’s own use. We can assume the maker was bilingual: not only did she select content from both French- and English-language magazines, but she also wrote text to indicate when to flip the page in both English and French. If she were creating a scrapbook for her own use, why not include recipes from both languages in one scrapbook? If these were simply each a collection of recipes from favorite magazines, organized by magazine, why make sure that the limited marginalia is in the same language as the clipped text? All together this suggests that these may have been made to pass down to two different audiences, possibly children or grandchildren, one French-speaking and one non-French speaking.

The creator’s only marginalia: “Turn page” in the English book on the left and “Tournez” in the French book on the right. Image Credit: Rachel E. Church

In the 1950s, there was a linguistic shift happening in the Maine Franco community. According to an interview with memorist and teacher Denis Ledoux, this was a “transformational” period during which the community went from a more insular, monolingual group to a less insular, bilingual group, continuing to maintain their culture. In his memoir French Boy: A 1950s Franco-American Childhood, Ledoux recalls that as children, he and his siblings made an effort to speak in French to younger relatives. Younger children were more likely to be exposed to English earlier than their older siblings, due to siblings speaking it, radio and television programming, and other factors, thus becoming more familiar with English than French. Therefore, it is very plausible that within the same family during the 1950s, such as our Prevost family, the older siblings would grow up with the ability to speak and/or read French, while the younger siblings would not.

If we assume these cookbooks were passed down to younger relatives, even though there is no evidence of cooking use, it does not mean they did not serve another important function. Scholars such as Janet Theophano, Daine Tye, Eleanora Sava, Laura Jiga Iliescu discuss how handmade recipe books act as valuable memory objects of people, family relationships, cultural traditions, and personal histories, even if the recipes are no longer cooked by the current generation because of changing tastes and nutritional trends. Therefore, this curious pair of French and English language recipe scrapbooks, even though there is no evidence of cooking use, may have still acted as treasured reminders of the person who made them, family memories, and cultural transitions during a period of change for the Maine Franco-American community. 

References List

Albala, Ken. “Cookbooks as Historical Documents.” In The Oxford Handbook of Food History. (2012): 227–240. 

Garvey, Ellen Gruber. Writing with Scissors: American Scrapbooks from the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Theophano, Janet. Eat My Words: Reading Women’s Lives Through the Cookbooks They Wrote. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Tye, Diane. Baking as Biography: A Life Story in Recipes. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010.

Rachel E. Church is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher in Maine. She holds a MFA in Intermedia and a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Maine. Her doctoral dissertation, Pages in-between: Intermedia Art between Cookbooks and Artists’ Books, focused on identifying and analyzing intermedia work in the space between cookbooks and artists’ books through the lens of intermediality and feminist research methodologies. Additional career highlights include publication of “Cooking Up Maine History: Sense of Place and Community Cookbooks” in Maine History and the 2023 Baxter Society Grand Prize in Book Arts for Women of Windy Hill. In addition to her art and research practice, she works as digital accessibility specialist, teaches art courses and workshops, and enjoys traveling, cooking, camping, hiking, and sewing.

Anna Faherty holds an MA in History and a MS in Library Science with a concentration in archives. She is the archivist & curator at the Franco-American Collection, located on the Lewiston, ME campus of the University of Southern Maine. As the solo arranger at the Collection, she: manages volunteers, interns and student workers, provides K-12 and university level instruction on primary sources and Franco-American history in Maine, coordinates community events, accepts archival donations, assists researchers, processes collections, and engages in preventative preservation practices to help meet the Collection’s mission to preserve and promote the Franco-American culture and history in Maine. Anna sits on the Maine Historical Records Advisory Board (MHRAB), and is a former board member of the Maine Library Association (MLA). 

 

Culinary History, Food and Drink, Global Exchange, Summer 2026

Flavors in Exile: The Cuban and the Frita

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By Christopher Fink and Elizabeth Nix

Two strangers approach on the streets of Hialeah, Florida and nod in recognition of a shared and complex past. Their birth story differs, but each represents a shifting culture, culinary traditions, and resilience during exile. One has grown very popular and their fame is so pervasive that, although not originating there, they are recognized in La Patria, the fatherland. The other, born on the streets of Havana, is less well-known and no longer recognized in La Patria, but has won the hearts of locals across south Florida. 

The story above is not about two people, but rather two foods – the Cuban Sandwich and the Frita. These foods illustrate the complex migratory patterns and relationship between the United States (U.S.) and Cuba, which is expertly described by Dr. Ada Ferrer in the book Cuba: An American History, a highly recommended book that highlights the forces that have shaped the story of these two foods.

Pre-revolutionary Cuba was a place of immigration, and Fernando Ortiz, Cuban anthropologist, lawyer, and essayist notably described Cuban culture, or Cubanidad, as an Ajiaco – a Cuban stew dating back to pre-colonial times that typically contains ingredients indigenous to the region such as malanga and yuca, but also foods influenced especially by Spanish and African migratory flows. Spanish pigs (which did their own form of colonization) forever made pork a part of Cuban cuisine, as evidenced by the lechón, a slow-roasted pork dish imbued with mojo flavor.  

The 19th century saw the first large-scale emigration flows, and Key West and Tampa, Florida became hubs for Cuban migration and cigar manufacturers who relocated to the U.S. because of tariff policies on Cuban goods. In the early 1900s, after the Cuban War of Independence, U.S. business and plantation owners (and the U.S. mafia) filled Havana, while more Cubans migrated to Florida for work. This time was also marked by changes in working life and food technology, which led to the rise in popularity of handheld meals, and the sandwich made its way to Cuba where the mixto, pan con lechon, and the medianoche, began to appear.

On a recent trip with our students, our Cuban tour guide Alex said “you will not find the Cuban sandwich here.” As it turns out, it does show up on a few tourist-friendly menus in Havana, but Alex’s sentiment largely holds. Though sandwiches such as the mixto were a likely precursor to the modern Cuban, the birthplace of its current form seems to be in Tampa, Florida. 

Making Cuban sandwiches in Ybor City – Tampa, Florida. 1966. Florida Memory Program (Public Domain).

The preparation of the sandwich has morphed over time and for a more thorough history, see The Cuban Sandwich: A History in Layers by Huse, Cruz & Houk. The classic includes slow roasted lechon, which brings Cuban flavor, as well as ham [salami/bologna], swiss cheese, pickles, and mustard, which demonstrate American food culture and the inventiveness of Cuban Americans in exile. While the Cuban was in its infancy in the U.S., another sandwich found its way into the hearts of Cubans: the frita. 

“A Cuban Sandwich,” 2012, by jeffreyw licensed under CC by 2.0.

Considerable debate exists about the frita’s early timeline, but the term can be found in Fernando Ortiz’s 1923 dictionary of “Cubanisms,” and Miami’s Nuevo Herald has documented its popularity in Cuba (particularly in Havana) in the 1920s. The basic components of the frita are a meat patty, topped with julienned fried potatoes, and served on a bun similar to Cuban bread. Originally, the frita patty was made from lower-quality ground beef and spices such as oregano, cumin, salt, pepper, and most importantly, Spanish paprika. The patty was then smashed onto the griddle and fried. Some friteros reportedly fried their julienned potatoes in the leftover packing fat from Spanish chorizo sold to them by local restaurants, which gave the potatoes an extra hit of flavor. Cuban bread or buns were used to hold it together, and it was all topped with mojo or ketchup, depending on the fritero. It’s unclear whether the originator(s) of the frita had the classic American hamburger in mind, or whether it emerged as a street-friendly version of Cuban picadillo. 

Frita from El Rey de las Fritas, 2026. Image credit: Christopher Fink.

Cuban illustrator and humorist Alfredo Pong describes the frita experience of his childhood in Cuba on his blog, explaining that fritaswere typically sold at a puesta, or street food stand, and were cooked on a griddle/fryer using charcoal and later gas. Puestas contained all of the ingredients for the frita, and could be found in Havana and throughout Cuba, with Friteros julienning potatoes, preparing ingredients, and cooking fritas and other foods, such as tortillas (omelets), bollitos de carita (black-eyed pea fritters), and more. 

Illustration of a common pre-revolutionary puesto. Image source: Alfredo Pong, “Puesto de Fritas (1958),” 2008. Used with permission. 

The popularity of the frita continued into the 1950s, but was slowed following restrictions and shortages after the Cuban revolution in 1959. The March 1968 Revolutionary Offensive eliminated privately owned enterprises like the puestas, and the frita disappeared from Cuban life. Fortunately, the frita had begun to take hold in Miami, in both food carts and shops such as Fritas Domino in 1962, started by Ramon Estevill and his sons. Others followed, including two famous rivals – El Rey de las Fritas (the King of the Fritas) and El Mago de las Fritas (the Wizard of the Fritas). For more, see All About the Burger: A History of America’s Favorite Sandwich, by Cuban-American writer Sef Gonzalez. 

Inside signage from El Rey de las Fritas, 2026. Image credit: Christopher Fink.

The two stories of these sandwiches weave in and out of the migratory patterns of Cubans and the influence of both U.S. and Cuban food histories. Though the frita is no longer recognized on the streets of Havana, its memory and ancestors live on in the streets of Miami and reflects an idealized, pre-revolutionary past that no longer exists on the island. 

The Cuban sandwich evolved from existing Cuban recipes, though its evolution to the current form was influenced and reinforced by its pervasiveness as a staple food for Tampa cigar workers. Outside of Cuba it has become synonymous with Cuban food culture, so much that this influence is finding its way back to the island as a reflection and projection of what tourists expect as “authentic” Cuban food identity. 

Christopher Fink is a professor in the Department of Health & Human Kinetics at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio, USA, where he also serves as the co-director of the Public Health program. His teaching focuses broadly on food studies, public health, community health education, and qualitative inquiry. Recently, his scholarly work has focused on the community and heritagization aspects of food festivals in Cuba, Italy, and the U.S., Cuban foodways, and oral histories of food and migration, and program development around community food insecurity. 

Elizabeth (Liz) Nix is a registered dietitian nutritionist and assistant professor of Nutrition in the Department of Health and Human Kinetics at Ohio Wesleyan University, where she has co-developed a nutrition and public health program. She teaches an introductory nutrition course, food transformation course, food systems and an advanced human nutrition and metabolism course. Her research interests include health behavior changes and the social and systemic influences of health,  particularly nutrition. Her interest in the food system and the role it plays in human health has led her to study systemic factors of diet across the world including Italy, Spain and, most recently, Cuba. She has recently led teaching and research projects related to her work with the Cuban community and the Cuban diaspora.

 

Culinary History, Food and Drink, Summer 2026

The Y.W.C.A. Cookery Book: Community Building in Beirut

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By Jennifer Brannock

On September 21, 1950, E. Gertrude Joly gave a talk about the women of Lebanon at the Royal Central Asian Society, a British society founded in 1901 focusing on the history and culture of Asia. In her speech, she described the diverse roles of women in the country, from educated Lebanese women advocating for equal rights (Lebanese women did get the right to vote in 1951) to village women who cared for their households while working in the homes of British families in Beirut. Even though Joly differentiates between the women of Lebanon, partially because of the audience at her talk, she celebrates the foodways of the women and culture, but with a caveat. “Arab cookery is very good, but you have to get used to it gradually – it is hard on Anglo-Saxon digestions until they have got used to it.”

Cover of the cookbook The Y.W.C.A. Cookery Book (1940s). Image courtesy of Special Collections at the University of Southern Mississippi.

In the 1940s, Joly and a group associated with the Young Women’s Christian Association (Y.W.C.A.) in Beirut, Lebanon, compiled the cookbook The Y.W.C.A. Cookery Book to highlight local and Western recipes. In the book, Joly refers to the dishes as Syrian, which may be a holdover from the time before Lebanese independence. It may also acknowledge the culinary overlap between Syrian and Lebanese cuisines. The cookbook was created to serve three purposes:

  1. “To supply the newcomer (generally a bride coming out to live in a country whose vegetables and dishes are unknown to her but popular with her husband) a book to guide her steps in the first anxious days of striving to “feed the brute.” 
  2. “To supply to those who live in the Near East something definite in ideas for the arranging of new and varied menus suitable to the country.” 
  3. “To supply to the Y.W.C.A a book, the sale of which may bring in an income to help in the furnishing of their annual summer camp in Lebanon.” 

The book had a broad potential audience, and to further the goal of making this book accessible to locals and expats, each recipe is printed in English and Arabic. In the preface, following the goals and purposes of the cookbook, Joly writes how disappointed she is in the book. “I regret that my original intention of committing to paper a representative set of Syrian dishes has been far from realized. The response to my appeal for such dishes was not as hearty nor as spontaneous as I could have wished…” 

With the combination of Lebanese, English, and some American recipes, Joly wanted to create a community of people, food, and culture through The Y.W.C.A. Cookery Book, and in her own words, she believes she failed. 

Recipe for Tamale Pie from The Y.W.C.A. Cookery Book (1940s). Image courtesy of Special Collections at the University of Southern Mississippi.

Why weren’t there more local dishes submitted? There could be numerous guesses as to why. Maybe the call for submissions was not as broad as needed. Most of the women who submitted recipes were probably expats married to professors or businessmen in Beirut. These women were not from Lebanon and probably employed local women to prepare meals in their homes. Another reason may be that the local women did not want to submit their recipes to a cookbook that could potentially put them out of a job. The Lebanese cooks in expat households relied on their recipes and cooking skills to maintain employment and publicizing their recipes makes their main commodities available to anyone who had the book. 

One wonders if the community that Joly hoped to bring together couldn’t be formed because the community didn’t exist in day-to-day lives. Joly infers in her talk to the Royal Central Asian Society that there were the wealthy expats like her, the educated Lebanese women who were pushing for equal rights, and the village women who helped in the expat homes. Maybe the emphasis wasn’t on creating a human community, but more of a diversity in recipes?

Recipe for Majadarah from The Y.W.C.A. Cookery Book (1940s). Image courtesy of Special Collections at the University of Southern Mississippi.

The Lebanese recipes included in the cookbook are few, but include dishes that are well known today. Simple dishes like Houmous Tahini, Mjadarah (a rice, lentil, and onion dish), and Kibbeh highlight the food of the local culture. More unique recipes like The Dervish’s Rosary (great name!) and Mouloukeya found their way into the book as well. 

Recipe for The Dervish’s Rosary from The Y.W.C.A. Cookery Book (1940s). Image courtesy of Special Collections at the University of Southern Mississippi.

From a Veal à la Marengo (a French classic) to the American Southwest’s tamale pie to a section on scones, the bulk of The Y.W.C.A Cookery Book focuses on European classics and wartime versions of English recipes. The European and American recipes incorporate some local ingredients, but most require tapioca pudding, Robinson’s Patent Barley, and other ingredients that were only found at specialty stores in Beirut. If anything, many of the recipes submitted don’t encourage community and seemingly emphasize the differences between the cultures. 

An advertisement from Anis Nasif, the proprietor of a grocery at the American University in Beirut, stating that he carries American groceries that can be used to prepare recipes in The Y.W.C.A. Cookery Book (1940s). Image courtesy of Special Collections at the University of Southern Mississippi.

It’s unknown how many copies of the cookbook were sold. What we know is that in 1950, E. Gertrude Joly published The English-Arabic Cookery Book. It’s evident from the preface that this cookbook is a copy of The Y.W.C.A. Cookery Book without attribution to the people who submitted recipes or contribution to the money donated to support the Y.W.C.A. Perhaps Joly believed that having edited the first edition, and likely contributed many of its recipes, she was entitled to revise the formatting and modify some of the recipes for a new edition under her name. She continued with her initial mission of providing a book of recipes for the young bride new to Lebanon, but her initial goal of creating a community cookbook had been left behind.

References 

Joly, Mrs. Gertrude. “The Women of Lebanon.” Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society. 38 (1951): 177-184.

Jennifer Brannock is Professor and Curator of Rare Books and Mississippiana at the University of Southern Mississippi. She has a BA in Art History and an MSLS from the University of Kentucky. In 2011, Jennifer started collecting Mississippi community cookbooks for Special Collections. Over 150 of these cookbooks are digitized and available in USM’s Digital Collections. Since starting the collection, she has hosted events highlighting the collection and given talks to local women’s groups, as well as conference presentations in Mississippi, the United States, and in Kazakhstan about the importance of cookbooks in local history and genealogy research. 

In 2020, Jennifer received the American Library Association/Reference and User Services’ Genealogy/History Achievement Award, recognizing her work with the cookbook collection among other achievements. She is active in the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (Vice-chair/Secretary for the Local History and Genealogy Section) and the Society of Mississippi Archivists (President).