Proof of the Pudding

When I tell people I am studying community cookbooks, they invariably are excited. I understand that enthusiasm, but it masks many of the challenges of examining books that few imagined would become part of the historical record. Community cookbooks rarely have introductory material, often are not dated, and sometimes organized in idiosyncratic ways. This section of the website is dedicated to examining sources. In a series of forth-coming short essays, I will explore some of the challenges of working with community cookbooks. Occasionally, I also may add a book review, promote an interesting online article, or provide some bibliographic materials.

Ten years ago, I approached Professor Jennifer Brannock at the McCain Library and Archives at Southern Miss about collecting community cookbooks. I explained that I was most interested in historic Mississippi cookbooks published before 1970 and that I thought there were around a hundred. Today, the archive houses over three hundred historic Mississippi community cookbooks and thousands published more recently. Southern Miss has also created a remarkable collection of significant cookbooks and community cookbooks from neighboring states, from some far-off states, and from overseas. The culinary collection now consists of over seven thousand items.

Substantial donations, most notably from Anderson Orr, a Mississippi-born educator and culinary enthusiast, have made the collection possible alongside the sustained efforts of Professor Brannock to fill in the gaps. Yet there are many, many cookbooks that have not made it into the collection. Many of these may be lost to time. Too often, community cookbooks are discarded when their owners die.

Over the years, I've visited antique shops, thrift shops, estate sales, and yard sales (as have friends eager to lend a helping hand) looking for long forgotten cookbooks. I have also visited dozens of universities and public libraries across the Mississippi looking for cookbooks, and am deeply grateful to the librarians and archivists who had the foresight to preserve works that were once easily dismissed. I'm especially grateful to the Amory Municipal Library, Carnegie Public Library in Clarksdale, Calhoun City Public Library, Delta State University Library, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Mississippi State, and the University of Mississippi for the efforts they have made to preserve and document these cookbooks.