Food for Thought: Episode 3

You’re listening to Death in Numbers, a podcast created by the Humanities Media Project
and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.
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Welcome back to our Food for Thought series. I’m Amy Vidar. And I’m Carolyn Barta.
And our past few episodes, we’ve discussed how cookbooks bridge cultural boundaries and serve as community
organizers. Today, we hope to give you a taste of a rich American food tradition complicated
by relationships to the family unit and economic reality. We’ll consider habits of conserving
and extending resources, as well as time honored practices of sustainability and seasonality.
To kick start this episode, we visited Baylor University’s Texas collection, which houses over
fifteen hundred Texas cookbooks. Many of these are family volumes. That’s right.
We had a delightful day giggling through genealogies, favorite recipes and family stories.
We discovered the line between a loose family recipe collection and other published cookbooks is quite narrow.
These homespun cookbooks were spiral bound recipe collections drawn from family lore, newspaper
clippings, package wrappers and promotional materials, Fritos and Jell-O. Oh my.
And they were often produced to commemorate anniversaries, family reunions, or even fundraise
for a beloved charity like a local church or school. The person or persons involved
in the compilation of these books was usually far from a professional chef or celebrity. Well,
except maybe in their family. That’s right. Usually they were caretakers of their family history.
Right? Because no cookbooks are created for commercial success or for wide readership.
More and more archives are collecting family treasures right alongside publish cookbooks,
even rare book archives like this. Slicing your library at Harvard, the New York Public Library
and the Library of Congress have extensive cookbook collections and recognize their value as historical
documents. These collections have extended our knowledge of women’s lives and literacies
from centuries past. As Dr. Rebecca Sharpless, professor of history at Texas Christian
University, explains, there are so many things you can learn about women’s lives from
reading a cookbook. Holness relied upon popular British cookbooks like Eliza
Smith, the complete housewife published in 1727. These guides were rather
limiting in the new world because they listed ingredients native to a European climate
as the first American cookbook published in 1796. Amelia Simmons
American cookery prompted the new nation to ask questions about its forming
identity through food. What is American cuisine? Her book relies
on adaptation and imitation. It features recipes that are distinctly North
American and have ingredients like cornmeal, cranberries, turkey
and squash. Of course, indigenous peoples had used regional ingredients
for thousands of years, but sentence does not attribute her newfound knowledge to existing
food traditions. What’s right and the story of early American food New England
hogs the attention. It does not adequately reflect the diversity of emerging American
cuisine. And over the past two centuries, American food has
represented these problematic realities. Not only did American cuisine rely
on cultural appropriation, the results of colonization and slavery, but
more specifically, Southern food muddles the diverse conflicts within communities.
Stay with us. As we feature three vignettes about recipe collections that are either formalized
into a cookbook or passed down by oral tradition. These represent the sometimes haphazard
but often meaningful associations created around our closest relationships with food.
Food production and early southern kitchens often put off that African and Caribbean culture
had seamlessly melded with European transplants. John Edgerton, a journalist who’s
known for his work on civil rights and southern culture, has explained the proximity of whites and blacks
in the South. Their isolation from mainstream America and the centrality of women to
the region’s foodways made Afro European cookery an existential reality almost from
the beginning of the United States. The South had thoroughly and individually integrated
its food. That’s true, at least from a food perspective. But despite the perception
of this complete integration, the realities of 19th and 20th century southern culture more broadly
reflected the after effects of slavery and continued segregation from Jim Crow laws. Even
after the Civil War, black cooks, mostly women, some men continued to run middle
and upper class kitchens. Remaining hierarchies within southern families gave rise to too prevalent
and often overlapping caricatures of black women connected to food preparation.
The aunt or mammy figure, which is occasionally swapped out with mis stripped these women of their
full identities in favor of a two dimensional portrait of their domestic role in a kitchen space.
Ostensibly, aunt or mammy were honorary titles bestowed on slaves and later
servants. This contagion is problematic because it really ingratiated them into the family
hierarchy. It tried to make African-American women de sexualized objects.
It signified that black women would not supplant the woman of the house either in her domestic or her wifely
duties to popular media representations of these caricatures where Mammy and Margaret
Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, famously portrayed onscreen in 1939 by Hattie McDaniel,
who was the first black woman to receive an Oscar for best supporting actress, and also Aunt Jemima,
a female counterpart to Uncle Tom, created as a marketing ploy. She was a mythic persona,
a caricature for all seasons, a jolly fat black woman and a do rag cooking up a storm
scene while she worked right. But this figure of Aunt Jemima only appeared
at the turn of the 20th century through the sales of products like pancake mix. Marketing
agencies perpetuated stereotypes of black women vital work to
reclaim. A history of black cookbook authors has most recently been undertaken by African-American
journalist Toni Tippin Martin and her 2015 book The Demand Methode Two Centuries
of African-American Cookbooks described as a culinary autobiography. Tipton’s book
emulates the scholarship of a museum exhibition catalog while maintaining the approachability
of an art book for a coffee table. It introduces generally unknown African-American
cookbooks to a wider audience in order to substantiate a heritage of greatness,
exemplify culinary freedom for black cooks, and allow everyone to embrace Jim
Iman’s bandana. Tekin Martin’s work has recovered, cataloged and critiqued
continue to be valued by future Americans. Tipton Martin Articulate to do I’m a code
and its significance in this clip from the University of Texas Press.
When we think about the idea of a Jemima code, some myth based
on a myth, it’s a story of actions,
responses, behaviors, choices that are made by people in response to
seeing this trademarked image that was used to categorize African-American women
who worked in America’s kitchens and was created by two guys
who wanted to sell more pancake flour. And so they collected
characteristics of real women and some from southern plantation
mammy stories. And they came up with this aggregate image that they called Aunt Jemima
and for ever. And Jemima has been the trademark image on cornmeal,
pancake flour, lots of other baking products. The problem with that image
is that all of those characteristics lead to stereotyping.
It’s sort of a private inside joke told between these guys and their broader community
of obviously of white Americans so that anybody who approaches that image
comes with their own thoughts, sees it through their own filters. And that includes African-Americans.
Right. So it had this peculiar encoded way of performing as
a symbol that sent multiple messages out into the community.
Some as simple as buy this flour, because this wonderful woman that you remember
from Slavery Days made really terrific pancakes. The reason that I
find the stereotyping to be such a problem is that it led to prejudicial treatment
of African-American women in particular. But some men as well who worked in America’s
kitchens so that we were sometimes categorized as the laborers
who had to do all this heavy lifting and heavy work. And that’s not very positive.
Or we were treated as people who really did perform quite
well in the kitchen. But we did so with a natural instinct, kind of a
voodoo magic. I’ve described it, you know, just this way that was generally speaking
in either way, not intelligent. And feminists and African-American scholars have gone
even further to describe that image as a way to keep African-American women
enslaved in a box.
Returning to the Baler archive, we were surprised to find one of the recipe collections profiled by Tipton
Martin, the curator Amy Oliver showed us another work. Tipton Martin had inquired about
but was not able to feature due to scheduling constraints. The first feature in the gym I’m A Code,
is by Lucille Bishop Smith, whose resumé is as varied as her recipe collection.
Smith’s accomplishments include marketing the hot roll mix, as well as working as a food
editor for CPA magazine. Working as a food demonstrator and caterer, pastry chef and dietitian.
As a black woman, she was a pioneer in the culinary profession. Smith’s Treasure Chest
of Fine Foods offers practical recipes, served with helpful tips, a recipe
for mock champagne reads. Here is a beverage for your teenage parties. Church
groups, educators, college students, Baltimore counselors and campers have stamped their approval
on this mock champagne as being the answer to a present need. Here it is,
put into a punch bowl, cubes of ice or a molded block of ice or frozen sprite at
a pink rose in semi frozen mix, equal amounts of sprite and apple juice and
pour over the ice. Allow it to stand for a few minutes, serve cold and delight
your guests. Try adding a bit of pink coloring to the champagne before pouring over the ice for pink
champagne. Note mixes serve to retain the sparkle and zest.
Yeah, I know what you’re signaling for your next big party. So not only are Smith’s collections
a treat to read and imagine serving, but they also supported important community work
in addition to raising funds for service projects like improving standards in local slums. Her words,
Smith also conducted itinerant teaching training classes, and she established the commercial cooking
and Baking Department at peer-review A&M University, a historically black college near
Houston, Texas. She really empowered others by using food as a tool of
social uplift. Another gem in the Texas collection is the Lone Star cookbook
and Meat Special From the Slaughter Pen to the dining room table by Hardaway Fillmore.
Fillmore describes his motive to pass on to housewives, cooks and those expecting to
become cooks. The benefit of knowledge acquired by him from study and upward of 30 years experience
in the kitchen as cook. Those who prepare the food are in large measure responsible
for the health of those who eat it. Therefore, a knowledge as to how to properly prepare food
is indispensable to good health. With over 30 years of experience as a chef and some of
the largest and leading hotels, cafes and railroad companies in the southwest, including
the Hilton Hotel in Dallas, Texas, Fillmore’s menus are organized by course, with suggested prices.
Twenty five cents for slice cucumbers, a dollar fifty for plank steak at lunch or
all the way to 180 for Vienna Schnitzel Holstein for dinner. These
published volumes expected a larger audience than the family concoctions which first told our attention.
Nonetheless, they really reveal a similar care for giving back to their community and they
prioritize teaching healthy food practices for families and neighbors.
The PBS series A Chef’s Life highlights how we can benefit from oral tradition passed
down from generation to generation in the kitchen because not all recipes are written down.
That’s true. Many families pass down knowledge through observation and hands on
lessons, recipes shared through such methods risk not including the details
needed to recreate the recipe on your own. A chef’s
life follows Vivian Howard, who grew up in North Carolina tobacco country after
pursuing a career as a professional chef in New York. She returned home to open her own restaurant.
Howard describes Southern cooking as a complex cuisine with abundant variations shaped by terrain,
climate and people inspired by seasonal local food. She seeks out traditional methods
of preparing traditional eastern Carolina dishes. In fact, she often ventures into neighbor’s kitchens
like I would do into your kitchen, and she recovers these soon to be lost cooking techniques that use distinctly
regional products. She finds out how to take watermelon, Ryan, that you might usually throw away
and make pickles, or how to whip up a batch of Apple Jacks. Yum! A frequent
guest on this show is Miss Lily Hardy, Septillion Arean Howard
refers to as her friend and home cook mentor. In a 2016 interview,
McSally explains as a little girl coming up, I worked in the fields with my daddy and my momma
putting up tobacco and stuff like that. After I got married, I worked at a nursing home
for about 30 years. But I worked in the fields all my life. I was about 5 years old
when I started working in tobacco because my mama and my aunt had us out there. Now
Miss Lilly keeps on working, but with Warren brother, one of Howard’s produce suppliers,
and in her spare time, she shares tidbits about her family’s cuisine under the
watchful eyes of her nonagenarian mother, Mary Von. Miss Lilly re-creates
family dishes from sweet potato pie to pineapple and chocolate cake. Interesting
combination. And what recipes Miss Lily and enacts on screen are deceptively
simple. But mastering the final result requires the years of experience that only
she possesses. Every time Wassily demonstrates a dish, whether it’s macaroni and tomatoes
or fried cornbread, the ingredient list and steps are truly bare bones basic.
But the results bring rave reviews in one of the first episodes of a chef’s life.
Miss Lilly teaches Howard how to make biscuits with just hold buttermilk lard and self raising
flour, which are all at room temperature. Her cooking techniques rely on the five senses
gathering together the dough until it feels right and waiting for the smell of the biscuits baking to
know when they’re done. Her recipe doesn’t specify enough in temperature cooking time, which is a
little like those early cookbooks we’ve discussed. In fact, fans of the show will even go and take
lessons from Mississippi and learn how to make her biscuits. But there still is no recipe that they can write
down because her recipes are closely guarded and really only end up being documented by other
people. Howard’s cookbook Deep Run Routes features several of these recipes
that are based on her lessons with Miss Lily in the kitchen. And it’s important to have
this documentation provided because some of these recipes will never get out of here. As our
show profile explains, her grilled chicken is highly prized address with the closely guarded
North Carolina style barbecue sauce. Warren is a regular fixture at her dinner table and has
asked often after the recipe. And even though Warren is her boss, he’ll be the first to warn you
that Lily told me. If she told me the recipe, she’d have to kill me.
In the past three episodes, we’ve considered how food not only sustains and nourishes individuals,
but also signifies growth and development of a people and their culture. We’ve uncovered
how, even in the most contentious and polarized of times, like the height of the Cold War or the
uncertainty of a civil war, the necessity of food brings communities together. When we talk
about food for thought, we haven’t just met literal food or the thought that we might have biting
into a rainbow bagel. Rather, we’ve wanted to consider how food can serve as an analogy for the
relationships we create in the kitchen and around the table and how patterns of those relationships
are preserved in food archives. While this feature of American cooking remains uncertain,
it always has. We are optimistic that it will taste great.
This has been Death in Numbers, a podcast created and produced by the Humanities Media Project
and the College of Liberal Arts at U.T. Austin and Liberal Arts Instructional Technology
Services. We are Amy Vidar and Caroline Baarda. Notes for the show, including
links and photos can be found on our Web site. Humanity’s media project dot org.
Our theme music is enthusiast by Tourre’s. Thank you for listening.