![]() ![]() Maybe there are a few poems or funny stories written by the contributors. Sometimes, the most charming - or utilitarian - aspects of these books aren’t even the recipes. But that often doesn’t matter, once recipes have been passed down, and when someone forever immortalizes their family’s most beloved recipe in their church’s cookbook, everyone who reads that book is better for it. A lot of times, somebody’s “secret family recipe” for pumpkin pie is just the recipe off the back of the can of Libby’s pumpkin puree. These recipes aren’t tested by a chef in a professional kitchen over the course of a couple of months they’re honed over decades of Thanksgiving dinners and Thursday-night suppers with family crowded around the table. In Applehood and Mother Pie, a cookbook curated by the Junior League of Rochester, New York, you’ll find Grandmother’s Old Fashioned Boston Brown Bread, which is apparently a “great way to use up sour milk!” In Cooking With Love: Recipes Old and New, assembled by the First United Methodist Church in Prague, Oklahoma, there’s a recipe for Aunt Scrilda’s Toffee Squares that’s clearly been passed down as a family treasure.īooks like these are intensely personal by nature, packed with the recipes that everyday people believe are good enough to share with the world. ![]() Passed down through the generations, the roots of these dishes often run deep. These books are packed, beginning to end, with sacred family recipes. Hattie and don’t know what exactly it is that makes her chicken fail-proof, you can almost visualize an old Southern woman in her kitchen, cooking up a time-tested recipe. ![]() A name like that conveys a sense of place and permanence: Even though you’ve never met Ms. In the 1984 edition of Superlatives!, produced by the Junior League of Oklahoma City, you’ll find the recipe for Hattie’s Never-Fail Southern Fried Chicken. In the era of glossy, chef-driven cookbooks that are arguably more beautiful than they are practical, it’s time for community cookbooks to finally get the recognition that they deserve.įlipping through one of these cookbooks almost feels sneaky, like you’re peeking into someone’s grandma’s recipe box to find her most treasured culinary secrets. 24, and it is one of many incredible community cookbooks, painstakingly curated by families, churches, community groups, workplaces, and charities, that have functioned as the backbone of American home cooking for decades. Pots, Pans, and Pioneers is not a particularly well-known cookbook, at least outside of Louisiana: It’s actually a collection of recipes gathered by the Telephone Pioneers of America, Louisiana Chapter No. Titled Pots, Pans, and Pioneers, the book is a staple in many kitchens across Louisiana, containing the recipes for everything from five-cup salad to Depression chocolate pie alongside Creole favorites like crawfish étouffée and chicken and oyster gumbo. This past Christmas, my favorite gift came in the form of a hulking 1976 cookbook that contains all the flavors of my childhood. ![]()
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