Born as a charity project during the Civil War, the community cookbook has been a portrait of American life for over 150 years. In the late 1800s, not only was it a thrill for a woman to see her name in print, it was a way to support a cause and build a lasting testament to the kitchen’s role in the early American home. “Laid end to end, they would form a history of America on a community level,” says Barbara Haber on the importance of community cookbooks as historical documents. [Excerpt from Mastering the Art of Bush Alaskan Cooking in the 1960s & the Rich History of Community Cookbooks by Elisabeth Fondell]
This piece is part of a larger project to document the culinary resilience of southeastern Minnesota’s Houston County during the pandemic. You can read more about my Crystal Creek Citizen-Artist Residency project here.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by community cookbooks. My bookshelves overflow with tattered volumes from the local thrift store. I consider these 25¢ purchases necessary research for my food writing. No matter how full my shelves are, there’s always room for at least one more.
This summer, I visited the Houston County Historical Society to view their extensive cookbook collection. In the cookbook archives, I discovered publications like The Happy Tooth Cookbook celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Houston Dental Clinic, Fire in the Kitchen by the Eitzen Fire Department, and numerous apple-themed cookbooks from La Crescent, the “Apple Capital of Minnesota.” Time slipped away. Nearly two hours elapsed before realizing it. I could have stayed all afternoon poring over handwritten recipes and cookbooks from the turn of the century, but the volunteers needed to go home eventually.
Mainspring, an arts and culture organization in Caledonia, MN, launched a community cookbook project this year to unite their community through recipe submissions. Since they couldn’t gather in person, they decided to gather through recipes. They let me cook and photograph a handful of submitted recipes for the cookbook. I hope to do more work like this that celebrates food and documents culinary history.
The Mainspring Community Cookbook is now available for pre-orders! The Rochester Post Bulletin did a story on the cookbook: Community cookbook brings diversity to the kitchen.
https://www.facebook.com/mainspringmn/posts/843704789797746
In addition to studying cookbooks and photographing recipes for cookbooks, I also write about community cookbooks. Comestible recently published my essay Mastering the Art of Bush Alaskan Cooking in the 1960s & the Rich History of Community Cookbooks as part of Issue 9, a special edition devoted to the wisdom, knowledge, and inspiration from the women who came before us. Click here to read about my grandmother’s cooking in Nome, Alaska and the Nome Cook Book.
For over a hundred years we’ve turned to community cookbook projects to support women’s rights, churches, the suffrage movement, fundraising opportunities, and more. Maybe through COVID-19 we’ll learn how to keep our communities united through collaboration even if we can’t gather together in person. Watching a politically-divided county in southeastern Minnesota come together to share recipes for a community cookbook gives me a needed burst of hope.
Time to visit the thrift store to scour the shelves for more community cookbook inspiration.
Elisabeth A. Fondell is a writer, potter, and food enthusiast living in the rural Midwest. She is currently working on Food Stories From Houston County, a project documenting stories of culinary resilience in Minnesota’s southeastern-most county through the Crystal Creek Citizen-Artist Residency.
Elisabeth began focusing on place-based food writing after receiving a grant from the Southwest Minnesota Arts Council to create a body of work celebrating the intersection of food and culture. See that exhibit here.
