By Suzanne Zoe Joskow 
When I began building The Community Cookbook Archive — made up of over four hundred Los Angeles-based collective recipe books, spanning three centuries — I was struck by the books’ role in Southern California place-making. The majority of community cookbooks are self-published, which means the included recipes are not from professional chefs. Instead, the entries reflect how contributors, usually women, cooked and ate at home. Indeed, notions of “home” are foundational to these books – from recipes evoking the flavors of a childhood far away to those anchored in native ingredients. Community cookbooks are absolutely records of place.

In the most literal sense, it is not uncommon for community cookbooks to include actual maps. The Westchester Directory and Culinary Art community cookbook, published 1950, opens with a map of the area, followed by hand-written recipes from residents within LA’s Westchester neighborhood. Visible towards the top of the map (image below) one can see the land that was, at that time, Howard Hughes’ personal airfield, now Playa Vista. 

Beyond maps, many community cookbooks, especially older ones, contain both the names of the recipe contributors and also their home addresses. In some instances, it may be the only time this directory information ever appeared in print — even in phone books, which often listed only a household’s men, or in census data, due to systemic undercounting of certain demographics.

One example of an early Los Angeles cookbook that features contributor addresses is The Federation Cook Book. The book was compiled and published in 1911 by Bertha L. Turner, on behalf of the California State Federation of Colored Women. Turner was a sought-after Pasadena caterer and philanthropist, who also served as a State Superintendent of Domestic Science. In the 1930s, she ran the Tea Room at the Hollywood Bowl. 

The Federation Cook Book is filled with recipes contributed by and, importantly, for Black women from throughout California. In her book, The Jemima Code, journalist Toni Tipton-Martin writes that the Federation Cookbook was one of the first books “that preserved the culinary values inherited and practiced by the black middle class.”

The cookbook also documents a uniquely Southern California history. While many of the included recipes come from across California, a significant number were contributed by women in Bertha L. Turner’s own Pasadena neighborhood. 

Because contributor addresses are included, I was able to plot many recipes from the book onto a present day map: 

Pasadena, especially South Pasadena, was infamous for its racist housing policies and covenants, so it is not surprising to find that the Black, mostly middle-class contributors to this book were clustered in Northwest Pasadena’s thriving Black community — where many early residents had come to LA in the late 1800s from the Jim Crow South. 

But one might immediately notice something else about the map: today the 210 freeway, which began construction in the 1950s, cuts right through these residences. In fact, I had to enlist an early 1900s map of Pasadena to make an address overlay on this present day one, because so many street names were changed, or eliminated. The majority of the Pasadena home addresses in The Federation Cook Book no longer exist. And yet, their kitchens are conjured by cooking from the book Turner compiled. 

As I leafed through other cookbooks in the Archive, I was intrigued to find Turner’s name in two additional books as well. One is an advertisement for Turner’s catering business in The Superior Cookbook (1927), put out by the Lamanda Park Woman’s Club. The other is the 1935 cookbook from the Pasadena Shakespeare Club, where Turner was a caterer. 

Seeing Ms. Turner’s name appear in books from both her primarily-Black neighborhood and her, often white, professional context, adds additional insight into the multitude of food worlds she moved between. In the 1927 Superior Cookbook, Turner’s advertisement included a new address, different from where the Federation Cookbook listed her in 1911. The Turners’ new purchase, at 725 Winona Avenue, was significant enough to gain coverage in the California Eagle, which described it as a “palatial residence”. 

I’ve added an approximation of this new address to the previous neighborhood map:

Unfortunately, Ms. Turner’s grand residence appears to have been demolished for freeway construction as well, and the address no longer exists. But it is remembered in the cookbooks she contributed to and supported.

Community cookbooks can be a meaningful mapping resource for scholars. However, they have rarely been treated as such and several books in the Community Cookbook Archive do not exist in library or institutional holdings. As with any primary source document, they are flawed and complex reflections of those who made them. But beyond recipes, the books capture granular, neighborhood histories, amidst ever changing city maps. As someone who studies place through the lens of food, I find these books to be an incredible gift. 

Suzanne Zoe Joskow has a BA in American Studies from Yale University and an MFA in Fine Art from Otis College of Art and Design. In her artwork and curatorial practice, Joskow focuses on the connection between physical material and social history — often in the form of maps or archives. Most recently, she is immersed in Los Angeles food history, exploring the ways Angelinos, particularly women, cooked at home. She has spoken about her work with a wide array of public audiences and media, including with The Los Angeles Times, NPR, KCRW’s Good Food, USC’s Archives Bazaar, and The Getty Museum’s ReCurrent Podcast. Joskow created and runs The Community Cookbook Archive, a growing, physical and digital collection of over 400 Los Angeles-based community cookbooks.