Cookbooks That Built America And Why We Still Love Them Today!

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: It's not bad, it's just

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: I'm just gonna put this on pause.

Hey everybody, it's Nancy May and Sylvia Lovely with another episode

of Family Tree Food and Stories.

Before we start, I wanna share something that's come to my attention.

A couple people have actually told me they love when they see the videos and some

other things, but they don't know how to subscribe to the show so that they get

notifications every week that it's out.

And if you're not aware Our show Releases.

Every Thursday early in the morning, but it's like clockwork,

so it's always available.

But go to podcast.family tree food stories.com.

We'll put an a link in the show notes so you've got that.

You can always get there.

At the top of the page, there's a button or a menu option that says follow.

If you click on that, it'll show you all the different listening platforms that

you can listen on, which the ones either are only a short list, but there

are hundreds of them you can listen on.

Click on your favorite listening app, and then.

Most of those apps when you get there, 'cause this, that, that link

will take you directly to an app that you like and it'll take to our

page or our podcast on that app.

And you just click on the option to follow, whether it's Apple

or Spotify or Good listen, or whatever it is you can follow.

And every week you'll get an update saying.

Thursday morning, the show has released.

We have one other thing that we're doing, which is a survey, and

I'll put in a link to that also in the episode notes at the end.

And we're trying to we are trying to, but we need your help in giving us some

feedback on the show so that we can.

Make the show better for you.

We think it's pretty cool, right?

Sylvia

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: Yeah, there

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: some great response from our listeners, so thank

you for sharing your comments with us.

But we're always trying to improve because, every recipe can just be

tweaked a little bit more, maybe with an idea or an extra glass of wine.

Thank you, Julia Childs.

But this episode.

I wanna start with a question to our dear listeners and followers.

I sound like an episode of Bridgeton, but my question is,

how many cookbooks do you own and do you actually cook from them?

Because this show is all about cookbooks and the importance of instruction manuals.

Most of us need at least one or two in our house or in our kitchen, and

probably not much more, but we keep buying them and we've inherited them.

. And they live in our kitchen, that they cookbooks live and breathe

in our kitchen, at least in mine.

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: Mm-hmm.

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: About you, Sylvia?

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: You know, you don't treat cookbooks

like other books, but in my case, I don't have a huge amount.

The last cookbook I bought was Al Ruker.

He was in town, you know, the weather guy on a whatever, whichever one he's on.

and that was interesting.

We're gonna talk about that a little bit later, about celebrity cookbooks

And I guess the only other one I acquired recently was about, there

was a famous restaurant in Savannah and my friend sent me that it's,

I'll have to get the name of that one.

It was so cool.

But we don't mind the stains and notes and the margins of

the cookbooks that we love.

In fact.

The one that I got with my air fryer is got the pages all bent over and

stains and all that kinda stuff.

You know, for my part I grew up in a, what I'm gonna call, and we're

gonna talk about this later too, what might be called a primitive home.

There were no cookbooks, but that's a thing, absolutely a thing.

It's just where ideas and recipes were passed down.

And my parents were raised in the hollers of Eastern Kentucky which

is an interesting place where people really have to be very self-sufficient.

And they grew everything and they just made up things and it was handed down.

But I always remember talking to my father who would protest when

someone would say, wow, you must have been hungry when you were young.

He knew, he replied with pride.

No, we ate real good.

And so that was without recipes and you know that unless they

were handed down, which they were, and they grew their own food.

So that was sort of my perspective from a, history of my family.

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: I'm not sure that we really.

Actually need to cook all the time from cookbooks.

Although I have a dear friend that I've grown up with, Diane, and she is very good

and very specific at following a recipe.

I'm very bad at following recipes.

I'm like, oh, it said that, but I don't have that, so I'll try this.

And, oh, it said a little bit of garlic.

Maybe I'll put like a little bit more than garlic and I'll throw

some rosemary and see what happens.

But that's how I cook.

However, on the cookbook front.

were in a new house as most people know, and we built the house,

but the kitchen island, I insisted that there was a space at the end

of the island for two shelves for cookbooks, and they are totally filled.

with my mom's cookbook, which I have right here with us, as you can hear

everything moving things around.

A make it now bake It later, cookbook that.

Interestingly enough, the type in there is all handwritten and

printed, so it feels like it's.

mom cookbook.

Anyway, my mother loved those cookbooks and I can't even

remember going to the store.

There was a little gift shop in Marion, Massachusetts that had all these

particular kind of cookbooks on the brand, make it now, bake it later, and she would

go through and which one she had and which one she didn't have, and what one

she liked and which one she didn't like.

And she always cooked something out of it, and every single time they were great.

But mom also had a joy of cooking cookbook, which

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: yeah, we'll talk about that too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: And my sister got that one.

So I, one year at a church, rummage Fair, which I love those things

because you never know what sort of treasures you're gonna get.

Found a joy of cooking that had belonged to somebody and it felt like a mom book.

I have somebody else's mom's joy of cooking book.

I have no idea who they are, but

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: I have an ambition to write a cookbook,

even though I'm not real familiar.

I own a restaurant and I don't know, people just don't get it that when,

as you age, you don't need to eat as much as restaurants feed you.

So we always split and we always bring something home.

So I'm a take home queen, and then I repurpose my leftovers and I mash

everything together in kind of a leftover.

Thing and it tastes really good.

So a leftover cookbook.

Okay.

There's

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: we did a show on leftovers, so

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: yeah, so there

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: if you haven't heard that one, we'll put the

episode in the show notes as well.

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: yeah, Well,

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: I like that on leftover cookbooks.

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: And they were always a clue to lifestyle too, and

how you were raised and how you were, reflective of what happened in your

kitchen as the way you live your life.

just like my describing my family and you describing your family, we're all

different and we all have some form of.

Cookbook in our head, whether it's, so we make 'em up from other recipes

and transform them into something else if they're like leftovers.

So it's sort of a, an ethos of cookbook ery.

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: But you have some history on cookbooks.

'cause I found this fascinating about how the early cookbooks came about.

And I honestly, I didn't even think about the early history of cookbooks until we

really started to dive or dig into this episode and doing a little research.

So why don't you share some of that information?

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: Yeah.

The earliest cookbooks weren't really written for home cooks.

I suspect they were over the open fire or big cauldrons.

You can see the image in your mind.

they were doing what my family did.

It was just from handing down.

The cookbooks were written for professionals, the palace kitchens,

the monasteries, and a lot of food comes outta monasteries.

By the way, if you've noticed that Christmas time fudge and all kinds of

things.

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: monk beer.

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: The Monk beer.

Yeah.

And they already assumed that you knew what you were doing.

So the instructions were pretty vague to the point of absurdity.

Take some butter cook until done.

I love that one.

They weren't teaching tools.

They were records.

They were records that we keep of the times.

And you know, like I said, home cooks relied on family tradition rather than,

recipe books and that kind of thing.

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: So not as precise, but they were survival mechanisms

teaching a skill and handing them down from one generation to the other.

I've got images of not necessarily a mom, but it could be an aide or

somebody else that's sitting there with a young child showing them how.

How to cook and prepare things, or even the boys were learning how to prepare wild

game and take care of those things, but it really is a way To look at history

and then we evolved into church cookbooks and women's clubs and the junior league

and the cookbook talk about survival.

The cookbooks became a fundraiser, so food became a different

type of survival mechanism.

In the documentation of these tools really is what they were And

That in itself tells you so much about the generations 'cause you don't see cookbooks

being created by communities like today, at least like I remember as a kid and to

have your name and your recipe selected for a church cook cookbook or a community

cookbook wasn't an honor because now your name was in print and it was a big deal.

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: You know, you made me think of a cookbook we do

have that I'd forgotten about was Ruby.

Ruby was a country woman from Moorhead, Kentucky.

If you're familiar with Kentucky, it's about an hour and a half.

It's actually a pretty sophisticated community now, a home of Morehead

State University and some really nice medical facilities.

But Ruby was a home cook and she gave Bernie.

Her cookbook for Christmas one year.

So we still have Ruby and I kept that one.

I left some of them behind, gave them to my daughter-in-law.

But Hey, I gotta tell you another thing about cookbooks too.

I think it's so cute that often that they're spiraled.

I love that.

But, and you know, I can use 'em real easily where you can

just bend back to the page.

But they were written a lot by women.

And it was one of the ways, an only place where their voice appeared in print.

Ha, love that.

We didn't know that we were holding up the banner for women, did we?

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: They became famous there versus today

where the chefs are

predominantly, the big names that they're out there that you hear

about are men other than, Martha and Ina, who we see everywhere You

know I hate to say that.

I'm not sure.

I consider them cooks.

Maybe ina garden, she's definitely a creative cook and a caterer

but not cooks in the sense of, oh James Beard, who , has a very

interesting and colorful background.

Or Bobby Flay or some of the others that you think about

that are French or Jacques,

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: Yeah.

The personal memories though and like I said I wish I had more

cookbooks to talk about, but I did remember Ruby, but I always think

of uh, Fred and Wilma Flintstone.

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: Yeah.

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: No no telling what they did, but that may

have been where rock soup originated.

Now there's a simple recipe, you wanna

hear it.

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: rock soup.

Did you as a kid ever the book called Stone Soup?

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: Yeah.

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: Remember that one?

know it was not a cookbook necessarily, but

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: It was a recipe,

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: was, it was

a

recipe.

But you mentioned that you didn't really have too many cookbooks in, in your

house, or you don't have that many.

I like I've got a lot of them, but.

I was at Barnes and Noble, oh, probably a couple of weeks ago, and was amazed

at How big the cookbook and cooking section in these stores have gotten

these bookstores, they are huge.

it was the whole wall of the upper level of this.

Barnes and Nobles down in the Tampa area, and cookbooks from Harry Potter

cookbooks to the death of cooking.

That sounds very ominous.

But there was so many, and I probably, I wish there would've been a chair there

'cause I would've sat down for hours and I would've lost Bob but, but I like the

ones that you can find in the little nooks and crannies and the special gift stores.

I've got one from the Connecticut Shores that I've made a number

of recipes and obviously, 'cause I don't follow recipes too well.

I've made some versions of my own.

But the Silver Palette Cookbook is a great one.

There's two of them that I've got.

There's a cranberry apple and red wine pie in there.

That is my go-to.

That is really good.

And then of course, Julia's book.

I have Julia's book and then I recently, I didn't even know, I've been

collecting them in finding them in old junk shops, which are fascinating.

I found one called Fire and Ice that was printed in 1978.

And found just, I just opened it by chance this morning.

It opened to a recipe for Diana's Portuguese sweet bread.

Now I didn't even know what Portuguese sweet bread till we

moved to Massachusetts as a kid.

This is like cake.

It's delicious.

So I'm gonna have to try that one now that it must be something that was karma.

It just happened to open to that one.

But

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: let me, um.

Yeah, let me, add in that Barnes and Noal makeup, don't know if it's there

or in the children's section, but my grandchildren have cookbooks written for

children, and that's an interesting thing.

And they're into cooking.

they understand and they read cookbooks, but going back to the early days.

The early settlers used the British cookbooks.

Of course they did, right?

until Amelia Simmons wrote American Cookery, which incorporated

American native dishes in foods like cornmeal, for there you have it.

Amelia did that.

Next came Fanny Farmers, the Boston Cooking School.

a kind of I was turned towards science and I bought one of these once

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: A Fanny

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: could, uh, the original, not original

one, but a reprint of it.

And you could barely read it.

It was written scientifically.

And that was published in 1896 and she was a cooking

expert and a culinary educator.

And so it was very.

Precise in its measurements and written in a very stilted, almost under un

understandable style and you know, about level teaspoon and, and all of that.

So it took everything in a direction of precision as opposed to just sort

of a pinch of this, a pinch of that.

And that had been more how people had gone along.

And then of course, Nancy talk about the joy of cooking,

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: So the Joy of Cooking was a self-published book,

which I find fascinating because today self-publishing is the hot thing versus

going through a regular publisher.

But 1931 by Irma Rombauer.

Who was not a chef, but she turned things, words a little bit more

reasonable for the home cook.

A little less scientific, but certainly very valid in what she did.

And the interesting factoid is that she wrote this book after her husband

committed suicide in 1930 and she needed money, so she used $3,000 of her.

Remaining inheritance and printed 3000 copies.

So it was a dollar a book.

And the Joy Cooking book is thick.

It's, I don't know how many pages.

It's a couple.

I'm gonna look at it right now because it's a couple hundred pages and lemme see,

what was the last page number on this?

It's those two somewhere.

Quickly I'm opening up, you know it's almost a thousand pages.

So 855 at the index.

close to 900 pages.

That's a big book.

Anyway so she sold these books during the Depression area as a way to sur

survive and take care of her family.

today it has sold over 20 million copies.

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: Wow.

Wow.

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: this is another story of food.

Being a survival mechanism.

And today the family is still involved and they reprint or recreate

this they I should say, they don't recreate, they update the book

every, I think it's every 10 years.

I don't have the exact number, but it's about every 10 years.

' cause I remember hearing the grandchildren talking about it.

And they test every single recipe in there to make sure that it.

It's worthy of staying in the book, or do they need to tweak it,

which makes it even more important.

'cause that truly is the joy of cooking, truly is a family

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: Uh huh.

A family memoir of a family.

Yeah.

And and I've got a question for you before, but I wanted to also

just finish that off by saying to recalling the World War ii, you

mentioned it in the depression era, brought on a whole new set of cookbooks.

Ending food waste became a topic.

It's returning, isn't it?

And including the wartime cook and included tips on how to use filler and

meats, oatmeal, potatoes as filler.

'cause you didn't have much meat.

Right.

And how Yeah.

How to use sugar and butter sparingly.

But I was just curious, what's your best and favorite recipe

out of the joy of cooking?

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: I would say sugar cookies.

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: That's

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: You know, there they're very simple recipes in there

that I go to, but I have a cheater.

So the cheater in the Joy of Cooking book, it's not actually in the book, but I you

mentioned that you have recipes from like, when you buy something like a device.

I bought a popover pan years ago.

It had to be probably like 20 years ago.

And.

It came with a popover recipe.

That is the one popover recipe that works for me.

It is still on that original piece of paper that came with a popover

pan, and it is tucked in the front of my Joy of cooking book.

I have to actually now write it and put it in our family tree food stories

book with a story in how I got it and.

How everybody loves my popovers.

But, the depression era, not to jump around.

I also have a cookbook that I found at a junk or antique shop

that was from the Depression era.

Not depression, but world War I, world War ii, and they talk about

rationing during World War II

And just how they added that into each recipe was fascinating to

read the history of our country, basically, or what was going on.

Through a cookbook that was in somebody's home.

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: Yeah.

And you know, you brought back a memory mine.

If there were any recipes in my family, they were on index cards.

And I'd still remember the memory.

it's one I regret is when my aunt was late for a family party and we

had to get back to Kentucky and she was going to make apple dumplings.

And I have the recipe and I've shared it before.

But.

She had it meticulously written out and it's in her handwriting,

but we left.

It was, she was in Ohio.

Oh yeah, she was in Ohio we were in Ohio visiting, and I said, no,

we can't wait any longer and left.

And she's always late, chronically late.

So she did arrive about an hour after we left with her apple dumplings,

and she died shortly thereafter.

I'm like, go ahead and eat those apple dumplings people.

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: And tell the stories.

Now we're gonna take a quick break because there's a lot more about

cookbooks that tell the story of who we are and even where we are today.

But we'll be right back.

So Sylvia, I'm ready to crack another cookbook,

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: I bet you are.

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: not an egg back of the spine of a cookbook.

So modern cookbooks today didn't invent storytelling.

'cause there's so many, Stanley Tucci has a cookbook that's out there

and I love the shows that he's got.

He of travels Italy and talks about the history of the region

and the people in the area, but.

There's only a few recipes in that book, and it tells his

story, which is interesting.

But I think a cookbook should tell our own family story.

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: I think so I will say that I did read

Jacque Pepins bio, one of his bio books, and there's a recipe in there.

I'm dying to try, but I never have enough people to eat it, which is Ruben's.

It's

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: Oh, a rub.

A Ruben,

he had a recipe for a

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: Yeah, Yeah, we did.

It just sounds so good.

But, we do all our entertaining at the restaurant, it's like our extension.

So we don't do that at home.

And I can't eat a whole Ruben, not even a whole Ruben.

But the beauty of it is, it's there if you have a family and you wanna try

something new, and then it's like you said, it's just got some recipes in it.

But it's not all about recipes.

But, you know, the best of these books offer three things.

Authority, intimacy and story.

Trust me, I know food and that probably is kinda like Al Roker.

So you watch him do the news and you trust him for that.

And then he wants to tell you what his family eats and his favorite recipes and

he probably doesn't cook every day, but, it's kind interesting and I'll tell you

by the way, how I got where I am today.

So

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: And cookbooks really, whether you're talking about

your own family cookbook that has been handed down, or one that you've

bought and put your own notes in.

They give you a, I shouldn't say they give you, they force you.

To slow down and just take a break and well.

The cookbooks today are absolutely gorgeous.

The photographs and the work and the art that goes into them.

I've got a cookbook that I found again at another sort of junk shop.

From the Homestead Inn,, I think that's West Virginia,

and it's absolutely stunning.

I have never made anything out of it, but I just love running my hand

over the pages and thinking about a time that I visited that with a, it

was an afternoon with a boyfriend in college with oh my God, look at this

castle in the middle of West Virginia.

And we of felt like they imported the squirrels because they

looked so well groomed, but.

And this string quartet and watching everybody having

tea, it was just delightful.

And we left and had lunch at McDonald's.

But being able to look at the beauty in the art of the cookbook, , my

mother-in-law gave me a cookbook that she had and probably didn't

really use that much, but it was Better Homes and Gardens of the day.

And it was the difference between the cookbooks of, I would say.

Probably the fifties, the photograph ones, and today are night and day because

the photographs were not particularly beautiful in appetizing, everything.

Had sort of a yellow okra look to it with the photographs

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: Yeah, although you want me to play.

You want me to, yeah, you want me to play devil's advocate on that A little bit.

Okay.

So all that food is so beautiful and don't even ask how they

make it look so beautiful.

'cause

then it'll like destroy all that for you.

And yours never looks that good, you know?

, a little imperfection in the photographs is something I'm not opposed to.

And it's just your own tastes, The photos in these and the famous people

cookbooks, just like you said, maybe they're not meant to look that good.

Maybe they're not meant to be cooked to look that good.

They're something else.

They're evoking some sort of.

Nostalgia better times and being in the kitchen and it's

not meant to look like that.

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: Comfort and family and coziness

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: and that's stage their own, you

know, what you feel like you want.

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: and you know what?

Everything will look better if you just throw a little.

Chopped green onion or parsley on it every now and then if everything

looks beige and brown on our plates at dinner, like I did it last night

and I cooked some salmon and I think this looks a little pink and brown.

It needs something else.

I just took some green chives that we had the, like the freeze dried chives

in a big bottle and probably not they weren't fresh, so call me out on that.

but I just sprinkled it on.

It's oh, that looks so much prettier.

Voila, we had dinner.

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: I love that.

we don't know where cookbooks are gonna go tomorrow.

They'll evolve just like everything else in America.

We sort of reinvent things, right?

But we remember also when salt and pepper were the primary seasonings

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: Oh my mom.

Yep.

Salt and pepper.

Yep.

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: Now I will say I've got a whole big lineup because the

problem with people like me is you need a tablespoon of this or a teaspoon of

this, but you can only buy these kind of, you know, jars that are bigger than that.

So you gotta really watch them and watch the expiration dates and all of that.

But I do have a whole cabinet full of them because the times I do cook.

You wanna add a little bit more of that spice and the ability to experiment.

And sometimes it works and sometimes it just doesn't.

But one of the most famous cookbooks, 'cause you're talking about ethnic

cookbooks too, are coming into Vogue.

The immigrant cookbook Recipes That Make America Great by Layla.

MBE has recipes from second generation chefs from six continents.

So that sounds pretty cool too,

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: yeah, I'm gonna have to go search that one out.

Spend a couple hours at Barnes and Nobles.

And of course, everybody's probably had at some point in their house, whether

it's theirs or their mom, one of those.

Church cookbooks or a junior league or even the local women's club?

I would say what it's the school, you know, the local school one that

is a little stained, a little tattered been used because the friend down

the street put her recipe in it.

Whether it was good or not, it didn't matter because they

weren't really tested by.

The producers, they were tested by us, by our parents they tell a story in their

own right about love and care and feeding for the community and recipes today.

I'm really sad that so many of these recipes are now on the internet that you

can find anything, which is fine, but it's not the same as holding a book in your

hand and saying, I wanna cook that one.

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: Yeah, except I do love those recipes online.

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: I do go through

#74 Sylvia Cookbooks Zoom: I have a whole drawer full of them because there

are times when you know, Hey, I'm just feeling a little experimental here.

I don't wanna buy a whole cookbook to do it.

I do use Ruby when I'm doing a Turkey.

Bernie does that.

Bernie does the Turkey, and he follows Ruby's.

Advice.

Old Ruby, she was something.

And so anyway, but we keep the books even the ones we don't cook

from those, like from Ruby and some people that we know and love.

#74 Nancy Cookbooks Zoom: It's like keeping a cherished friend

in your kitchen, in your house.

Cookbooks give us a way to remind us that we're loved, that we share love in our

kitchen and appreciation for one another.

And as they say, every meal has a story.

I

would say not as they say.

As we stay.

Every meal has a story and every story is a feast.

So on that note, if you have a cookbook story.

Please share it with us and go to Podcast Family Tree Food Stories because we'd

love to hear your story about a family cookbook or come to our Facebook page,

which is Family Tree Food Stories.

We'll put a link in the episode notes, and again, every meal has a

story and every story is a feast.

We'll see you soon, or maybe we'll read about you in the next cookbook.

Take care.

Bye-bye.