Women as culinary authors in America

[cheesecurdsinparadise]

So, my committee chair is in charge of a collection of articles on influential women writers. She wants me to write a short article on American culinary authors, but this will stretch the limits of my knowledge. I figure Fannie Farmer and Julia Child are no-brainers, and I think Amelia Simmons and Karen Hess were revolutionary enough to be included. I have a couple more ideas I'm not too thrilled with, but basically beyond this I'm at a loss. Who do you feel is so influential, so revolutionary, or so iconic that they absolutely must be included in such an article?

[JanMcBaker]

MFK Fisher and Laurie Colwin come to mind.....

[maggiethecat]

Clementine Paddleford

[judiu]

Irma Rombauer

[rconnelly]

So, my committee chair is in charge of a collection of articles on influential women writers.  She wants me to write a short article on American culinary authors, but this will stretch the limits of my knowledge.  I figure Fannie Farmer and Julia Child are no-brainers, and I think Amelia Simmons and Karen Hess were revolutionary enough to be included.  I have a couple more ideas I'm not too thrilled with, but basically beyond this I'm at a loss.  Who do you feel is so influential, so revolutionary, or so iconic that they absolutely must be included in such an article?

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Ruth Reichel

maybe Mimi Sheraton

both because they "broke barriers"

pick up a copy of American Food Writing compiled by Molly O'Neill.

there's no shortage of influential woman fod writers.

I'd even add Ms O'Neill.

[MaxH]

So, my committee chair is in charge of a collection of articles on influential women writers.   She wants me to write a short article on American culinary authors, but this will stretch the limits of my knowledge.   I figure Fannie Farmer and Julia Child are no-brainers...

Look, you folks. Please don't be limited by writers who happen to be in bookstores now, or old-standby household names. (Fannie Farmer? The Rombauers?!? Originally a local fundraising cookbook based on canned foods! A parody of US cooking!! Useful only because it was totally reinvented each subsequent edition and usually mentioned simply because it's familiar.)

Far and away the single most durable US cookbook happens not to be common today (or on the Food Network), yet it dominated the 19th century in a way demonstrably without parallel in the 20th. That was Eliza Leslie's Directions for Cookery (Philadelphia, 1837. 1999 Dover facsimile reprint, ISBN 0486406148.)

The earlier but slightly less influential one is Mary Randolph, The Virginia Housewife Or, Methodical Cook (Washington, DC, 1824. 1993 Dover facsimile reprint, at US $7.95 suggested retail, ISBN 0486277720).

Those two books commence the cooking Americana collection at the Copia food and wine museum. (In the Dover facsimiles -- I've handled those copies myself.)

60-plus editions of Leslie appear in principal cookbook bibliographies. Also, the book had life, spirit; it talked about quality in ingredients, passion in results. (In 19th-c. language, of course.) A criticism of the Fannie Farmer, popular from early 20th c., and despite its considerable scope and coverage of basics, is that its "scientific" tone was at the expense of flavor, quality, and the sensual side of cooking -- inappropriate maybe for the Boston Puritan tradition. It is an important book but it also has been credited with setting back the standards of US cooking during the 20th century.

Other names: Karen Hess certainly, she unearthed some of this and more (Martha Washington; slave cookbooks -- look into the early slave cookbook that Hess edited.) Katherine Golden Bitting wrote the epic US food-book bibliography (1939), still definitive; later started the US Library of Congress's cookbook section with her collection (1946). There are principal women writers in other countries (Elena Molokhovets, author of the Russian national cookbook in the 19th c., a big subject in its own right, PM me for more; Mrs Beeton, more or less her British counterpart; Mme. de Saint-Ange among others in France and a recent discussion topic Here.)

[cheesecurdsinparadise]

This is all fantastic! Things like Bitting starting the Library of Congress' collection is exactly what my editor is looking for. I've read Paddleford and excerpts from Randolph, but I didn't realize they were so important. But Fannie Farmer needs to be in there, because positive or negative, her impact on modern popular culture is undeniable.

[JAZ]

You might consider M.F.K. Fisher (mentioned above): not only did she write numerous books of her own, but she also translated and annotated Brillat-Savarin's Physiology of Taste.

[MaxH]

I also endorse MFKF, she helped establish non-cookbook "food writing" as part of a wider writing career (originally in Hollywood), as well as eventually becoming one of the colorful locals in my region.

More: (And note my remarks above about Joy of Cooking reflect in no way on the many people who've found editions of the book useful, including me, but rather, that digging beyond the familiar can reveal realities that surprise us, and even diminish icons.)

Eliza Leslie, already mentioned, is also noted for adapting French recipes for the US public in her 1832 Domestic French Cookery, if not the first then one of the wider-read US authors to do so. Though Julia Child may be the name most familiar in this role to current readers, when she continued this 200-year tradition what she pioneered was certainly not adaptation or popularization of French cooking,* but doing it on TV.

Frances Moore Lappé moved vegetarian principles to the US mainstream with her bestselling Diet for a Small Planet (1971, written, I understand, at the age of 26). This book popularized eating "lower on the food chain" by demonstrating how to complement the partial protein sets found in various vegetarian food sources (and even, pragmatically, how the same principles could benefit even carniverous diets by cleverly leveraging small amounts of meat proteins). US livestock were "protein factories in reverse" with inefficiencies from 1:3 for small poultry to 1:16 for beef cattle. The book's bulk was recipes, again showing (not just asserting) that vegetarian cooking need be neither narrow nor bland.

Joyce Chen, from her little Massachusetts restaurant, began demystifying and popularizing Chinese cooking to the US half a century ago, in a series of books perennially reprinted and still recirculated on the used market. At the time, many gringos thought Chinese cooking meant things like chop suey (an American invention). She paved the way for such popular authors as Kenneth Lo and his followers such as Martin Yan.

*Knowing this is so, and why, is one indication of familiarity with US cookbook history.

[Habeas Brulee]

Paula Wolfert, Alice Medrich, and Dorie Greenspan.

[tsquare]

Don't you think Alice Waters should be included?

And hate to say it - but Peg Bracken was influential, if in a strange way.

[JAZ]

Don't you think Alice Waters should be included?

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Remember that this is a request for culinary authors, not just influential women. Alice Waters has co-authored a few books, but her primary influence isn't as a writer.

[Joisey]

Leah Chase, great lady and one of the queens of southern cooking.

[sammifloater]

Barbara Tropp Edited January 4, 2008 by sammifloater (log)

[kiliki]

I second the recommendation to pick up the Molly O Neill (ed) anthology:

American food writing

[cheesecurdsinparadise]

Research is going along well. Some of you undoubtedly already know this, but apparently Mary Randolph was the first person ever to be buried in Arlington cemetery. Thinking about including Gael Greene, if there's room.

[Lindacakes]

Poppy Cannon.

[pastryelf]

If you are talking about culinary writers you should also look at Elizabeth David (UK), Mrs. Beeton, Edna Lewis (US South), Jean Anderson, Marian Burros and Jane Brody (the NYT troika), Nancy Harmon Jenkins (Mediterranean historian), Reay Tannahill (food historian), Marion Cunningham (one of Beard's acolytes).

Hope this isn't too late for you....

[docsconz]

I am in transit returning from a trip to India with Julie Sahni. Her book remains the definitive one on Indian cookery in the US. In addition to excellent recipes, she provides great background.