Women’s History Month Featured Cookbooks
Hopkins Dining celebrates Women’s History in March featuring cookbooks by females with interesting stories. In collaboration in research with the Sheridan Libraries and part of Special Collections here at Johns Hopkins University, we bring you the Top 5 Women featured cookbooks that range over the last century and a half. These unique cookbooks show women’s history over time and the evolution of cooking and female progression.
Cookbook # 1: A Handbook of Invalid Cooking
Boland, Mary A. A Handbook of Invalid Cooking New York: The Century Co., 1903. Octavo, vii, 326 pages. Revised edition originally published 1893. Annotated throughout.
Early on when Johns Hopkins Medicine was known as the Johns Hopkins Hospital Training School, this cookbook was written as a textbook used for students. This particular cookbook that is in special collections was owned by a nursing student who annotated it throughout and even wrote the word “friend” along the fore-edge of the book.
Cookbook # 2: Alice’s Restaurant Cookbook
Brock, Alice May. Alice’s Restaurant Cookbook. NY, Random House, 1969.
This cookbook from the 1960’s was a really groovy cookbook written by Alice Brock, who had her own restaurant, and the general vibe was influenced by Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant. This is a fun example of countercultural cookery with some feel-good recipes written in an easy-going fun and engaging style.
Cookbook # 3:
Dawson, Aubrey, editor. Women’s Suffrage Cookery Book. London, Women’s Printing Society, ca 1908.
During the suffrage movement, women took a step above and created this slim volume of recipes to cook up suffrage in kitchens across England. This cookbook also included joke recipes by women to bring on change as well, included to the left is one example of one of the joke recipes.
Cookbook # 4:
Chao, Buwei Yang. How to Cook and Eat in Chinese. John Day, 1945.
This cookbook was one that helped popularize Chinese dishes in midcentury America. In the early days, cooking in general was a family affair from all generations and the Chinese culture is no different with family meaning everything and a collective means and being first overall. This cookbook was a family affair among Chao’s husband and daughter as well. Chao was a medical student with knowledge of only a little bit of English so having her husband and daughter help develop this cookbook was very important. Not only did this cookbook list Chinese recipes and introduce new methods of cooking into the American culture, it also help inform AMericans about the history, traditions and etiquette around Chinese cooking and cultures. Fun fact was that this cookbook introduces many new words into the American culture in the 1940’s including stir-fry which is very popular today.
Cookbook # 5:
Abby Fisher. What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Southern Cooking. San Francisco: Women’s Co-operative Printing Office, 1881.
Our last cookbook on the list is also our oldest cookbook in the Special Collections list that the Sheridan Libraries’ staff helped collect for our blog. If you look at the cover and pages to the left, you can see just how aged this cookbook is. this cookbook was written by an enslaved women and is an early example of a cookbook that serves as a document of the work by San Francisco’s Women’s Printing Co-Operative, an interesting example of 19th century intersectionality!