Welcome to Sewanee History 238’s class cookbook project! On this website, you’ll find a wide array of historic American cookbooks ranging from 1871 to 2004. Students searched through the University Archives, Professor Whitman’s personal collection, and their own family homes to find a cookbook, which has allowed us to include a variety of books in this collection – from passed-down, handwritten family recipe books to popular mass-produced cookbooks. No matter the type, all of the cookbooks represent an important part of everyday life for American women and families: the kitchen. In addition to the launch of this website, the students analyzed their chosen cookbooks, and their classmates’, in an essay about the importance of material objects in recording women’s history.
So, why cookbooks? To some, the study of cookbooks may seem trivial, or unimportant. However, upon closer analysis these cookbooks reveal an abundance of information about the lives of the women who contributed to them, and the role they played within their families and communities. Most of what we know of history is recorded through official documents: constitutions, treaties, leases, town records, and the list goes on. While these sources are indeed important, they often provide a skewed view of history, and typically only tell one side of the story: men’s. We know of the wars that have been fought, the scientific achievements that have been made, and the great buildings which have been constructed, but too often we overlook the importance of understanding what real day-to-day life was like for people of different times and places, and how this can relate to us now. Cookbooks are one of the only artifacts that provide a view of history through a domestic lens, and therefore give us insight into what women were experiencing within the home, while men were off conquering countries and building cathedrals.
Besides telling us what people of a certain time period or region were eating, cookbooks can contextualize how historical moments have shaped domestic life. For instance, the ingredients women used and the kinds of food they prepared can reveal information about what was widely available at the time, or what was culturally important to a community. Another example includes recipes for home remedies and medicinal practices, which may help us track the development of health technology. Overall, the stained pages of your grandmother’s cookbook may offer a lot more than what meets the eye.
We encourage you to take part in keeping the history of these women alive by perusing the cookbooks in our online collection. Each cookbook portrays a unique view of what it was once like to be a woman in America, creating a patchwork of lived experiences. We hope that you find these cookbooks, the recipes, and their history to be as illuminating as we did!