Category Archives: Food and Drink

Autumn 2024, Culinary History, Early Modern, Food and Drink, Posts

Recipe Sharing Across the Channel: French Recipe for Plum Pudding

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By Lauren Owens

Plum pudding is a classic dish in English cuisine. Indeed, the boiled sweet is one of those cultural markers associated with England, and yet it features ingredients that are not native to England: currants, raisins, nutmeg, and ginger. These ingredients make tangible (and edible)the reach of the British Empire.1 By the eighteenth century, boiling was a cooking trend that had largely died out in continental Europe, yet printed French texts from the nineteenth century show that plum pudding had made its way to France.2 How did knowledge of this dish spread to Europe? I found this document while doing archival research at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France Arsenal location in Paris.3 This recipe for plum pudding was in a folder of random culinary recipes. I was looking for medical recipes and remedies, but this folder caught my eye with its contents: recipes for cheese, strawberry syrups, almond cake, and how to conserve vegetables. Finding this folder was a treat while working in the archive. It provided another area of recipe production that I was not actively looking for. 

“Recette pour faire les puddings à l’anglaise: le plum pudding,” Supplément 4: Ms-12728 to à la fin. Ms-15701. Mélanges XVIIe-XVIIIe. Bibliothéque National de France Arsenal, Paris, France. https://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/pageCollections.html?col=2#

This recipe shows that knowledge about popular cultural dishes was shared across the pond much earlier than the published texts indicate. This recipe was titled, “recette pour faire les puddings à l’anglaise: le plum pudding,” and follows popular English recipes for the dish.4 However, this record is distinct in two ways. It features two sets of handwriting, showing that someone added to this recipe and altered the ingredients to their tastes. Second, this new author added two spoonfuls of brandy and two spoonfuls of powdered sugar to the recipe while the English recipe uses the natural sweetness of the dried fruit for the sugar content. This source is significant for showing the process of recipe alteration and adaptation. 

I decided to make the pudding at home. My sources often lack specific voices and explanations behind the recipe. This opportunity allowed me to think like the people I study.

“Recette pour faire les puddings à l’anglaise: le plum pudding,” Supplément 4: Ms-12728 to à la fin. Ms-15701. Mélanges XVIIe-XVIIIe. Bibliothéque National de France Arsenal, Paris, France. https://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/pageCollections.html?col=2#

I began by cutting a pound of softened butter; the recipe called for suet, lard, tallow, or butter. Butter was the cost-effective choice. I folded the currents and raisins into the butter with my hands so they would fuse. Next, I grated a loaf of white bread into fine pieces and then folded that into the butter. The butter, dried fruits, and bread mixed gave off a strong smell of apple cider vinegar. I added nutmeg, ginger, and a dash of salt.

Image taken by the author.

I separated eight egg yolks from their whites and saved four whites to add to a pint of milk. After adding the liquids, I created powdered sugar in a mortar and pestle and added two spoonsful to the mix with the liqueur; this added richness and sweetness to the batter. The recipe called for the batter to be thick enough for a wooden spoon to stand on its own.

Image taken by the author.

The next step was prepping my cheesecloth for boiling. I soaked the cloth in hot water and added the filling.5 Now, it was time to boil: though it was not large (about the size of a grapefruit), this pudding took five hours. To keep the pudding submerged, I had to keep adding water as it was cooking on the highest heat of my stove. By the end, the water resembled that of a beef tea. Got Bovril? 

Image taken by the author.

Finally, the taste: what does an eighteenth-century plum pudding taste like? Well…it tastes like wet bread and raisins. The smell resembled that of eggy bread, which makes sense considering the main ingredients were a loaf of bread, eight yolks, and milk. It was not bad, but it lacked significant flavor, and my pudding did not conform fully during the boiling process. My expectations were low in terms of taste, but the experience was certainly rewarding. This experiment has helped me find creative methods for conducting my dissertation research when I find myself lacking creativity and struggling to find the words to write about my recipes. This research has helped me with how I think about recipe production. The lack of diagrams or sketches to follow made me focus on the directions. I found myself having to work and think more slowly than I usually do in the kitchen. I relied more on my sense of smell and touch with this recipe. The lack of images with this recipe was freeing for this attempt—I was not worried about looks. I wanted the demonstration to work. I would argue that in modern-day recipes, there are almost too many images; this can inhibit the adaptable nature of cooking and recipe development. The images provided with a recipe signify that the experiment has worked; these ingredients cooked at this temperature will make this product–great—but too many images could lead to feelings of failure if the final product does not match the source. I have learned from this experiment (quite literally) that the proof is in the pudding, to understand the individuals who made these recipes we must be willing to try it their way, but we must also be willing to modify and change the recipes for our liking. I would have added dates, cinnamon, and more sugar to this pudding for a stronger flavor and sweetness.

Boiling the pudding. Image taken by the author.

These sources are evidence that popular recipes passed back and forth between countries earlier than the printed texts show. This French recipe shows how these individuals altered the English plum pudding to their tastes after experimenting with the original source. By continuing to use recipes to unpack the development of cultural cuisines and national dishes, we can understand how people made sense of their class status and cooking knowledge and developed their tastes during the eighteenth century with the influx of new ingredients, foods, and tastes.

The finished pudding. Image taken by the author.

Lauren Owens is a PhD candidate at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. Lauren is working on her dissertation on recipe and remedy production and cultures of health and wellness in eighteenth-century France. Follow @lowenshistory on X for sporadic tweets and the occasional meme.

 

  1. Kaori O’Connor. “The King’s Christmas Pudding: Globalization, Recipes, and the Commodities of Empire,” Journal of Global History 4, no. 1, (2009): 127-55. ↩︎
  2. The French recipes are featured in Antoine Beauvillier’s L’art du cuisiner published in 1814, and Émile Littrés dictionnaire de la langue française (Littré) Tome 3, in 1843, respectively. These texts do not elaborate much on the recipes for plum pudding, in fact, in L’art du cuisiner, the dish is listed under the salad category, as “plombpoutinge, sauce au vin de Malaga.” A.B, Beauvilliers, A. B, Katherine Golden Bitting Collection on Gastronomy, and Elizabeth Robins Pennell Collection. L’art Du Cuisinier. A Paris: Chez Pilet, Imprimeur-Libraire, 1814. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/07023590/ 
    Emile Littré, Dictionnaire de la Langue Française (Littré) Tome 3, Hachette, Paris, 1873. Dictionnaire D’autrefois Public Access Collection. https://artflsrv04.uchicago.edu/philologic4.7/publicdicos/navigate/16/18643?byte=25827192. 2024 ↩︎
  3. “Recette pour faire les puddings à l’anglaise: le plum pudding,” Supplément 4: Ms-12728 to à la fin. Ms-15701. Mélanges XVIIe-XVIIIe. Bibliothéque National de France Arsenal, Paris, France. https://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/pageCollections.html?col=2#  ↩︎
  4. Hannah Glasse, The art of cookery made plain and easy/ by a Lady (Hannah Glasse). 1747. Book. London: Prospect Books, 1983. The Wellcome Collection. 2024. ↩︎
  5. Glasse, The art of cookery made plain and easy/ by a Lady. ↩︎
American Studies, Culinary History, Food and Drink, Modern, Posts, Summer 2024

Stovetop Solidarity: “Recipes for Semi-Starvation” and Antipoverty Organizing in American Cities

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By Kimba Stahler

Flipping through recipe cards or a cookbook is not the apolitical exercise some might think. Whether picked by workers earning a fair wage in a safe environment or transported by truck drivers fighting for a better union contract, ingredients politicize meals.

Historically and recently, American consumer boycotts have moved the picket line to the checkout counter. Refusing to buy meat in 1935, Delano grapes in 1969, or Starbucks coffee in 2024 meant standing against high prices, labor rights violations, and corporations’ political machinations.

Ingredients contain another critical political dimension. Given food’s ability to gather, meal preparation and consumption are central to grassroots movements. One progressive student organization in the 1960s, the Students for a Democratic Society, devised a meal-time strategy in their “interracial movement of the poor.” From 1964 to 1966, that community organizing campaign established projects in fourteen Northern, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwestern cities. Full-time staff and summer volunteers organized locals while living in the same derelict housing as their constituents. But they didn’t just live locally: they ate locally too, serving similar dishes to the families who lived in these neighborhoods full-time. Over 500 white middle-class young people circulated and followed what they called “recipes for semi-starvation.” By adhering to welfare recipients’ budgets, they cooked up community and solidarity.

Community organizing and the “recipes for semi-starvation” brought together Americans who lived in two different societies. Many Students for a Democratic Society members grew up in the suburbs with access to pocket money and went on to college classes after finishing high school. Antioch College freshman Christopher Overs felt confident that summer organizing in Cleveland, twenty-five miles from his suburban home, would not jeopardize his fall tuition. Similarly, Elaine Lipshutz, a sophomore at Radcliffe College, could dedicate her school breaks to the Boston project, headquartered a twenty-five-minute walk from campus, rather than waged labor. Relocating these relatively short distances, Overs, Lipshutz, and hundreds of others entered another social world.

A summer organizing in inner cities introduced undergraduates to the estimated forty million impoverished Americans, a demographic hidden from their childhood neighborhoods. Living in derelict housing in Chicago, Cleveland, Newark, Boston, and other cities, they talked with their new neighbors, white and Black families that postwar affluence had left behind. Many were un- or underemployed men and single mothers receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children, a program referred to as welfare. In discussions of daily struggles, the white students offered possible political solutions and invitations to tenant councils, unemployment unions, and welfare rights meetings.

Charlotte Brooks, “Image from LOOK – Job 65-2559 titled Divorced mother,” 18 Oct. 1965. Photograph shows divorced single mother Vi Erker eating dinner with her son Gary, Saint Louis, Missouri. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress. https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ds.08295

Voluntarily enduring poverty, progressives built community bonds and signaled their commitment to ending economic injustice partly through food. Both short-term volunteers like Harpur College student Judith Bernstein and full-time staff such as University of Michigan alumnus Carol McEldowney reckoned with the disparity between middle-class and low-income plates. Breakfast sometimes consisted of a single egg or an ounce of corn flakes topped with reconstituted milk. Between community meetings, they stuffed day-old bread with liverwurst and lettuce. After a long day of door-knocking, they often sat down to a dinner of liver and onions, creamed chicken over biscuits, or split pea soup with a salad dressed simply with a mayonnaise and ketchup mixture.[1] Their menus and their tireless efforts persuaded some locals that they were sincere and reliable social justice activists.

Eating what their neighbors could afford, the students came face-to-face with the political implications of welfare. Poor families could rely on the social safety net established by the New Deal and the War on Poverty. As countless learned firsthand, however, financial and material assistance programs afforded a bare minimum, placing countless commodities out of reach. The Cleveland project whittled their daily food allowance to forty-three cents per person, replicating the budget welfare programs provided.[2] Features of middle-class tables, like orange juice, were far too costly. “Don’t buy it unless the group shows signs of scurvy,” project leaders instructed.[3]

Through the Students for a Democratic Society’s organizational and culinary efforts, they established and revived grassroots antipoverty organizations that helped a national movement for economic justice to flourish. Their efforts most fruitful efforts were with single mothers who received welfare. They assisted the Citizens United for Adequate Welfare in Cleveland and Mothers for Adequate Welfare in Boston, organizations that channeled numerous welfare recipient activists into the National Welfare Rights Organization. While organizing at the grassroots, Students for a Democratic Society leaders used cuisine to establish interpersonal and political relationships between the sons and daughters of postwar affluence and less fortunate Americans.

[1] Recipes for Semi-Starvation, n.d., box 29, folder 2, Students for a Democratic Society records, 1958-1970, Wisconsin Historical Society, Division of Library, Archives, and Museum Collections, Madison, Wisconsin (hereafter SDS records).

[2] Hugh to O and C, July 29, 1964, box 24, folder 5, SDS records.

[3] Recipes for Semi-Starvation, n.d., box 29, folder 1, SDS records.

 

Kimba Stahler is a Humanities Without Walls Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities Institute at Penn State University. She is a historian of US women’s and gender history and social justice movements. She specializes in twentieth century antipoverty and feminist movements. Her research interests include participatory democracy, alliance formation among grassroots activists and organizations, and identity politics. 

For Kimba’s dissertation research, she conducted oral histories to uncover how members of the Students for a Democratic Society living in Cleveland constructed that organization’s most successful grassroots organizing campaign during the 1960s. Using those oral histories, she produced a story-telling podcast entitled “Visions of Democracy” that encourages listeners to think about the various forms that democratic participation takes. Her current book project, tentatively titled Rats in Common: The Untold History of Cleveland’s Interracial Welfare Rights Movement, explores how white middle-class political organizers and poor white and Black single mothers forged productive political relationships out of their shared commitment to radical forms of American democracy. 

 

Culinary History, Education, Food and Drink, Knowledge Transmission, Medicine, Modern, Networks of Knowledge, Posts, Summer 2024, Women and Gender

“Pain au Levain”: Reproductive Rights, Recipes, and Community Cookbooks

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By KC Hysmith, PhD
Packaged in a brown paper and cellophane fold-over bag, not unlike those you’d find at your corner bakery or at the farmers’ market, the Beaux “Bread Bag” contains a hefty stack of paper printed with information about reproductive rights and health care access. Activists gather in-person around a table to share this knowledge, much of it word-of-mouth, and then work together to print, cut, fold, and assemble each bread bag specific to the needs of individual states–including Wisconsin, Kentucky, Georgia, Illinois, and North Carolina–whose governments have severely restricted or completely banned numerous essential reproductive health care procedures.

Activists packing up bread bags. Image Credit: Borealis
Sourdough loaves stenciled with phrases about abortion access. These loaves were photographed and then printed as ephemera in the bread bags. Image Credit: Borealis

Numerous scholars agree that recipes are a type of feminist discourse, and a “particularly feminine way of knowing and sharing knowledge.”[1]  Importantly, these crowd-sourced books also helped to spread information to other women, at times subversively and at others loudly. As Carrie Helms Tippen explains, “Recipes, and by extension cookbooks, are narratives that focus on silenced women and challenge phallocentric methods of writing history.”[2] It stands to reason, this rewriting also serves to create safer spaces for the sharing of other women-centered knowledge, including information related to reproductive health.

For many generations, reproductive health has been both an incredibly personal topic and      socially taboo subject. There are likely countless “recipes” for abortions in addition to instructions for providing post-procedure nourishment and care tucked away in unpublished manuscripts and personal correspondence – two historically important forms of media used by women to share food knowledge. Before the technological advancements of modern gynecology, when reproductive healthcare carried different political implications, women passed information to one another. This information frequently took the form of a recipe and used ingredients women often grew at home or that grew nearby. argues that women often collected and shared recipes based on herbal medicinal traditions of the time period and “were expected to have general medical knowledge in order to fulfill their Christian duties as wives, mothers, and caregivers, both within the home and the community.” [3]

Centuries later, despite advancements in printing technologies and progress for women’s political agency, the knowledge of reproductive care recipes continues to be shared using subversive and community-aligned methods such as zines, ephemeral pamphlets, and booklets. After the increasing threats to abortion access levied by the Trump Administration starting in 2016, and then the 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court, resulting in no constitutional protection of abortion access, activists across the nation published updated or reprinted reproductive care “cookbooks.”

The recipe format serves as both a commonly-known narrative device and a respected method of knowledge sharing amongst women. Modern reproductive care texts tend to feature one or a combination of “recipes” for at-home abortions using specific emmenagogue herbs or medicines, including mifepristone and misoprostol, in addition to more traditional recipes and meal guides for providing nourishment and care for those who have experienced an abortion. Zines including “Grow Your Abortion: Herbs to Make You Bleed” (published by Holistic Abortions) and “Reclaiming Our Ancient Wisdom: Herbal Abortion Procedure and Practice for Midwives and Herbalists” by Catherine Marie Jeunet include herbal recipes as well as short historical overviews of herbal abortifacient histories. The second issue of Wildseed Feminism focuses on herbal remedies “for Lifelong Reproductive Care” and includes recipes to manage “uncomfortable symptoms relating to PMS, periods, pregnancy, and perimenopause.”

Cover of Reclaiming Our Ancient Wisdom. Image Credit: Microcosm Publishing
Cover of Cooking Up Trouble. Image Credit: Leela Cyd and Anne Parker

Using a combination of community knowledge sharing with fundraising, the Breadbox project, founded by social activist artist Borealis, “averts high tech surveillance through a multi-modal constellation of access points.” And much like other recipe collections, “no two installations, video presentations, bread bags, or conversations associated with this project are exactly the same; the project travels and evolves as social conditions require.” Each bag includes a small pile of ephemera, so similar to the small recipe leaflets that once accompanied early 20th century appliances and popular grocery store ingredients, with state-specific reproductive health care information, all-options phone numbers, colorful zines, and lists of action-items for supporting abortion access. One zine entitled “Medication Abortion” ends with a short section on “support” advising readers to consider “making food in advance (soups, broths, warm & easy to digest, simple snacks)” or asking someone else to cook for them.

The back of the North Carolina bread bag. Image Credit: Borealis

A larger booklet entitled pain au levain: safety, comfort, & expectations during pregnancy release, artfully riso-printed in hot pink and brown, features a section on creating a care plan with the “universal things people need when they are bleeding through menstruation, miscarriage, or abortion: nutrition, rest, warmth, and community.” The booklet’s title is a play on the French phrase for sourdough (pain au levain) and the normal, but painful side effects of the abortion process. An additional layer of meaning to the phrase, refers to the painstaking process women face to access basic reproductive care in modern day America.

Much like any other community cookbook old or new, these reproductive health care texts continue the practice of supporting a network of women with resources, respect, and acknowledgement. The recipes serve a different purpose than a gifted baked good or a weeknight casserole; instead, they exist as an integral political medium of knowledge sharing and community in the precarious reproductive health care landscape of contemporary America. As the bright yellow tag on the Bread Bag reads: “We share our resources for the common good.”

[1] Carrie Helms Tippen, “Writing Recipes, Telling Histories: Cookbooks as Feminist Historiography,” in Food, Feminisms, Rhetorics, edited by Melissa A. Goldthwaite, 18.

[2] Tippen, “Writing Recipes, Telling Histories,” 18.

[3] Ashley Buchanan, “Dittany: Women’s Herbs and Reproductive Control,” Plant Humanities Lab, JSTOR, https://lab.plant-humanities.org/Dittany/.

REFERENCES:

Borealis. pain au levain: safety, comfort, & expectations during pregnancy release. (self-pub.,  2022).

Borealis. Bread Box Project. https://beaux.studio/breadbox.

Buchanan, Ashley. “Dittany: Women’s Herbs and Reproductive Control.” Plant Humanities Lab, JSTOR, https://lab.plant-humanities.org/Dittany/.

Cyd, Leela and Anne Parker. Cooking Up Trouble: Recipes to Nourish Women  (self-pub.,  2016).

Helms Tippen, Carrie. “Writing Recipes, Telling Histories: Cookbooks as Feminist Historiography,” in Food, Feminisms, Rhetorics, edited by Melissa A. Goldthwaite, 15-29. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2017.

Holistic Abortions. “Grow Your Abortion: Herbs to Make You Bleed.” Red Hook Collective, 2021.

Jeunet, Catherine Marie. “Reclaiming Our Ancient Wisdom: Herbal Abortion Procedure and Practice for Midwives and Herbalists.” Eberhardt Press, 2009 (reprinted through 2019).

Dr. KC Hysmith is a writer, food scholar, and historical recipe developer. She holds an MLA in Gastronomy from Boston University and PhD in American Studies focusing on food and culture from the University of North Carolina. Her dissertation, “#FOODHERSTORY: Food and American Women’s Political Resistance from Suffrage to the Digital Age,” investigated the legacy and power of women’s food history. She is the editor and co-editor of Edible North Carolina (UNC Press 2022), An American Girl Anthology (University Press of Mississippi, forthcoming), and When Southern Women Cook (America’s Test Kitchen, forthcoming). Find more of her work on TikTok (@foodherstory) and on Instagram (@kchysmith). Find more of her work here: https://www.kchysmith.com/

American Studies, Culinary History, Food and Drink, Libraries, Archives & Museums, Modern, Posts, Summer 2024

In Search of Meat Substitute Recipes in Historical U.S. Community Cookbooks

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By Jennifer “JJ” Harbster
The Library of Congress has been collecting U.S. community cookbooks since the copyright deposit of  one of the country’s first community cookbooks, Maria Moss’s 1864 “Poetical Cook Book”  which raised funds for wounded Civil War soldiers. What has amassed since are thousands of titles that represent more than a century of U.S. food trends, eating habits, food systems, and responses to historical events.

One such food trend are meatless meals. Meat substitutes appear in U.S. community cookbooks at the turn of the 20th century for a variety of reasons, including economics, patriotic duties, and nutritional concerns, as well as religious and ethical practices. These early alternative meat substitutes were homemade, using ingredients that were easily attainable, such as nuts and legumes. Occasionally, statements on reasons for including meat substitutes were featured with the recipes, which provide historical context.

Preface to the World War I community cookbook “Twentieth Century Club War Time Cook Book,” Pittsburg, PA, 1918.

Using the Library of Congress digital community cookbook collection, I went on a search of early meat substitute recipes, focusing on cookbooks published from the 1890s through World War I.  This time range was selected to coincide with the rise in vegetarianism in the U.S and the food (diet) reform movements of Sylvester Graham and the Kellogg Brothers, as well as the promotion of meat substitute recipes during WWI.

Place is an important filter when surveying community cookbooks, and so I focused my attention on Chicago since a series of lectures on vegetarianism was given at the 1893 Columbian Exposition that influenced a wave of vegetarian organizations and business in the city.  To broaden my search, I included titles by state: Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, and Michigan. Lastly, I was already familiar with the “Meals Without Meat” chapter (pgs. 371-390) written by Mrs. Antoinette “Nettie” Harris, a vegetarian, in the 1903 “Raisin Center Cook Book” from Fowler, California, and so I wanted to see if I could discover additional vegetarian voices in titles from California.

Vegetarian Thanksgiving Menu from “The Raisin Center Cook Book,” Fowler, CA, 1903.

Searching for meat substitute recipes in historical community cookbooks requires the use of a variety of terms such as meatless or meat-less, meat substitute, substitutes for meat, mock, and even sham (see for example the recipe for Sham Oysters in “Inglenook Cook Book,” p. 139). I discovered that the use of mock can be problematic since the term is more often applied to an alternative meat to use in a recipe, such as Mock Turtle Soup recipes that call for calf liver. However, mock can be used to describe a meat alternative recipe, such as a Mock Turtle Soup recipe from the “Monmouth Baptists Ladies Cookbook” (Illinois, 1907) that uses black beans instead of meat (p.15), so searching for mock recipes should not be avoided.

Altogether, I reviewed 50 titles and did not find as many meat substitute recipes as I had hoped. I did discover a curious pattern of plant substitute recipes for oysters throughout the early 20th century titles. For example, the “North End Club Cook Book” (Chicago, 1905) featured Mock Fried Oysters (p.31) and Mock Oysters (p. 35). One of the most common substitutes for oyster was salsify, also known as oyster plant or vegetable oyster, a plant that is not native to North America and is said to taste like oyster when cooked. Also worth mentioning is the use of celery as oyster substitute such as Mock Escalloped Oysters (p. 66) from “Monmouth Baptists Ladies Cookbook” that makes “a delicious dinner dish and resembles escalloped oysters.” It is possible that these occurrences of oyster plant or celery substitutes were a direct result of overfishing practices which depleted oyster populations along the east coast of the United States by the early 20th century.

Illustration of Salsify in “Grocer’s Encyclopedia” compiled by Artemas Ward, 1911: 447.

As one would expect, the WWI community cookbooks were a treasure trove of creative meat substitute recipes. “Twentieth Century Club War Time Cook Book” (Pittsburgh, PA, 1918 ) included its meat substitute recipes with their chapter on meats (pgs. 44-52). The recipes were highly creative and included names such as Liberty Meat (p.44) and Camouflage Roast (p.45); as well as meatless substitute recipes for common foods such as Mock Sausage (p.47) and a Nut Scrapple (p.49). “Conservation Recipes” (Berkeley, CA, 1918) featured a chapter on meat substitutes (pgs. 62-75) that recommended the use of “dried beans, peas, some nuts, milk, eggs, and cheese” (p. 62). A couple of creative examples featured were a Mock Veal Roast that used lentils and peanuts (p. 69) and a Vegetable Roast that used soybeans (p. 70).

Liberty Meat recipe from “Twentieth Century Club War Time Cook Book,” Pittsburgh, PA, 1918.

Chicago community cookbooks proved to yield the most success in my search for meat substitute recipes.  There were also some unexpected finds such as a recipe for granula (sic), a “hygienic food” (“Inglenook Cook Book,” Elgin, IL, p. 93), and a mock smelt recipe  (“The Housekeepers’ Friend,” Chicago, 1891, p. 33) that boasts “This is a fish dish, that is not fish at all.” Further explorations of meat substitute recipes in historical community cookbooks would include a larger pool of Chicago and Illinois titles to gain a deeper understanding of the influence of vegetarianism and use of meat substitute recipes  in these Midwestern communities.  The historical presence of these plant-based alternatives challenges the stereotype of the Midwestern diet as a strictly sturdy meat-and-potatoes affair.

Jennifer “JJ” Harbster is the head of the Library of Congress Science Section. In this capacity she works with an amazing group of librarians who develop science collections, provide reference services, and create research products and programs. She is also the Library’s culinary specialist since cooking/baking is a science, and cookbooks are classed as a technology, which fall under her section’s purview. She delights in spending time with the Library’s cookbook collection. For her, cookbooks are so much more than a list of recipes. They are stories, histories, and documents of eating habits, food systems, and people.