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Cookbook mixes literary works with recipes
Posted 8/1/2003
MADISON, Wis.-- For most nineteenth-century women, domestic life centered
on the kitchen and the meals prepared there. A group from the Friends
of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries are recreating a sense
of that life with a cookbook, using literary excerpts describing meals
or meal preparation to illustrate recipes from contemporary cookbooks. A Literary Feast: Recipes and Writings by American Women Authors
from History appears in book stores Aug. 1 and is the culmination
of 10 years of work.
A Literary Feast recalls the days before microwaves, refrigerators,
and standardized cooking measurements. The recipes were selected from
the William B. Cairns Collection of American Women Writers (1650-1920)
in UW-Madison's Special Collections, which is primarily a literary collection
of approximately 8,000 titles by more than 3,250 women writers.
The cookbook highlights fiction and nonfiction pieces by female authors
such as Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, and Catharine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s The American Woman’s Home, or, Principles of Domestic Science,
as well as cookbooks from the Cairns Collection.
Other recipes come from the historical cookbook collection at Steenbock
Library, the Wisconsin Historical Society, second-hand bookstores and
family collections. The writers appearing in this collection, including
Louisa May Alcott and Kate Douglas Wiggin, often celebrated with special
meals in their novels and the recipes in the cookbook reflect food women
would have prepared at the time.
Although most recipes were not kitchen-tested, they were adapted to
meet modern cooking practices, and the authors enjoyed the recipes they
made. The cookbook includes instructions for chowders, pies, candy,
vegetables and more.
“I spent a whole weekend measuring cups of sugar and flour,”
says Yvonne Schofer, the English Humanities bibliographer at Memorial
Library and editor of the cookbook. “I had to make sure the recipes
could be understood and, if you did try to prepare them, they would
turn out normally.”
The writers appearing in this collection often described meals for special
occasions in their novels, and the recipes in the cookbook reflect food
women would have prepared at the time. The cookbook includes instructions
for chowders, pies, candy, vegetables, and more.
A Literary Feast was compiled by Joan Jones, Loni Hayman, and
Anne C. Tedeschi, all members of the Friends of the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Libraries.
The writers and editor have assigned all royalties from the book to
the Friends. Jones Books in
Madison, operated by Joan Strasbaugh, a former UW–Madison editor,
is the publisher. A Literary Feast may be purchased at area
bookstores.
