When I began writing Something We Dreamed, I was also starting a SUNY research project. In this second post, I continue to share what I discovered during my studies.

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“…in Cookery, the great Cooks have such a high way
of expressing themselves, that the poor Girls
are at a Loss to know what they mean.” —Hannah Glasse

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RULES OF DOMESTIC ECONOMY:

Hannah Glasse

IN HER BOOK Just a Housewife, Glenna Matthews states that the first male-written cookery books “were unlikely to be consulted beyond the urban elite.” Not much has changed today: Average homemakers have no use for recipes detailing exotic (and expensive) dishes that can be served to kings.

In 1746, England’s Hannah Glasse self-published her first cookery book for use by those who — like the author — had many mouths to feed with very little money. Glasses’ recipes took “a more practical line than her French [male] contemporaries” and she concentrated “on specific instructions.”

Based on the author’s life experience of raising eight children in a busy household, Glasse wrote down her “rules of domestic economy” for others to follow.

A year later, Glasses’ second book, The Art of Cookery made Plain and Simple, became a huge commercial success — although some men reportedly did not believe such a work could possibly have been written by a woman.

Glasse was also accused of plagiarism: a problem that is not at all uncommon in historical (and contemporary) cookbook writing.

For example, in 2008, Missy Chase Lapine sued comedian Jerry Seinfeld and his wife, Jessica, for plagiarizing recipes and ideas from Lapine’s The Sneaky Chef used in Jessica’s book: Deceptively Delicious. Lapine’s claims against Jessica Seinfeld were recently rejected by a US court ruling which decided the best selling books “were not similar except for their goal of hiding healthy food inside the favorite meals of children.”

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NEXT UP: Eliminating the Element of Chance: Mrs. Beeton

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Want to learn more? Check out:

1. Anne Willan’s Great cooks and their recipes: from Taillevent to Escoffier (New York: McGraw Hill).
2. Glenna Matthew’s Just a Housewife: The Rise & Fall of Domesticity in America (New York: Oxford University Press).
3. Eric Quayle’s Old Cook Books: An Illustrated History (New York: Brandywine Press).

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1. R U ready to party like it’s Nineteen.Sixty.Three? Serve Susan Holt’s “Mad Men-Themed Snacks” at your next cocktail soirée!
2. Think you’re the next Paula Deen? How2heroes is a site where food enthusiasts interact with a growing online video-viewing audience.
3. Does your middle-schooler have the spirit and soul of Julia Child? Check out Del Monte’s Stirring Up Health recipe contest.
4. Is your cooking repertoire lacking a perfectly memorable Skillet Macaroni & Cheese? Bookmark Serious Eat’s take on a new Food52 entry submitted by Jennifer Hess of Last Night’s Dinner.
5. Need inspiration for an end-of-summer cocktail that will erase all memories of what went wrong with your summer vacation? Look no further: Molly Lehman has uncovered Round Robin Bar’s Fall Foliage (featuring burnt-orange Grand Marnier) in her piece written for the Washingtonian.

When I began writing Something We Dreamed, I was also starting a SUNY research project. Well the project is now complete — and with this post I’ll begin sharing what I discovered during my studies.

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EARLY HISTORY:

The Cooking Mystique

WOMEN HAVE CONTRIBUTED GREATLY to the culinary arts, yet their greatest contribution may be to the art of written recipes and cookbook writing.

What women food writers have given to this instructive (and sometimes literary) form includes the recipe/cookbook as we know it today: a scientifically sound instrument that allows users to live fuller lives by saving time and resources. Women also create food-focused works that are beautifully sensual tools providing much pleasure.

THE FIRST RECIPE WRITERS were wealthy men who had the education and resources to record elaborate details illustrating dishes created and served by their slaves and professional (usually male) kitchen help. These recipes were for use in aristocratic households and characterized by spices like nutmeg (“the caviar of the day”) as well as more exotic foods including crane and swan.

The book Royal Cookery (1710), for example, was full of “extravagant advice” including recipes served to English royals. The meat loaf “Pupton of Pigeons” is written in paragraph form and is so detailed the cooking of it would “have occupied the talents of a skilled under chef for most of a working day.”

Author Sherrie A. Inness’ book Dinner Roles: American Women and Culinary Culture adds that much like Betty Friedan’s “feminine mystique,” in early cookery literature, traditional gender roles were illustrated by the difference in how and why sexes cooked. Men, for example, could “choose to cook” and “need not pay attention to [a woman’s] tastes” while women were expected to use cooking as a way to “attract a man.”

As women began to put their own recipes on paper, they were writing for a much different audience: middle class domestic staff (usually women) and homemakers concerned with feeding and caring for family.

The written works of these women have had a lasting and valuable contribution to society as a whole. Whether it was intended or not, early women food writers contributed directly to the liberation of all females. With sage household advice they encouraged other women to use their time as they pleased. With more leisure time, these women also began to realize the option of earning money while working outside the home as trained professional cooks.

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NEXT UP: Rules of Domestic Economy (Hannah Glasse)

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Want to learn more? Check out:

1. Anne Willan’s Great cooks and their recipes: from Taillevent to Escoffier (New York: McGraw Hill).
2. Glenna Matthew’s Just a Housewife: The Rise & Fall of Domesticity in America (New York: Oxford University Press).
3. Sherrie A. Innes’ Dinner Roles: American Women and Culinary Culture (Iowa: University of Iowa Press).
4. Eric Quayle’s Old Cook Books: An Illustrated History (New York: Brandywine Press).
5. Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (Dell Paperback)

News to nosh on!

1. Variety is reporting “Gordon Ramsay, at Your Service” will be a stop-motion animation series similar to MTV’s “Celebrity Deathmatch.” Looks like Chef Ramsay can’t keep his nightmares in the kitchen…
2. Sky News reports British cooking celebrity Keith Floyd will be cremated in a coffin made from banana leaves “as a humorous nod to his love of cooking with leaves.”
3. The “Michelle Melt” is made from organic, locally grown ingredients including free range turkey, caramelized onions, tomato, lettuce, herb mayo and a wheat bun. The tribute to America’s First Lady also includes SWISS cheese! Couldn’t former “Top Chef” contestant Spike Mendelsohn find a suitable American-made fromage?
4. Speaking ’bout burgers — 31-year-old speed-eater Takeru Kobayashi just set a new world record by chowing down 93 Krystal hamburgers in eight minutes! Better luck next time, Joey!

ONCE UPON A TIME I received a vintage, dog-eared copy of Mimi Sheraton’s The Seducer’s Cookbook as a gift from my mother.

The giving of this book from mother to child is, apparently, a time-honored tradition.

The note,

“Somehow I’ve got to get a daughter in law! Love to Michael from Mother, 1967″

is scribbled inside the used-book’s front cover…

I’m crossing my fingers that my own mother is simply appreciative of the fact that I admire Mimi’s work, the latest of which, The Bialy Eaters, reflects the author’s obsession with a salty, onion-flecked cousin of the bagel best eaten at Kosher bakeries on New York’s Lower East Side.

Unlike the well-researched and often moving Bialy Eaters, Sheraton’s The Seducer’s Cookbook (published in 1963) features food as mere appetizer, or more specifically, bait:

“Just as a mouse trap sits

with its lure of cheese,

waiting for the hungry mouse to bound over

to be captured forever.”

“EVER SINCE I WAS FIFTEEN, and persuaded to neck with a boy who gave me a frozen Milky Way,” begins the author, “I have been aware of the seductive powers of food.” Even the legendary lover Casanova, she continues, used food as “the main weapon in his personal war on female chastity.” After all, Mimi winks, how could a girl not trust a man providing her with wonderful things to eat?

I MET UP WITH MY OWN Casanova in Ferrara, Italy, not far from Bologna. He was a respected (married) professor who looked like Woody Allen, spoke little English, and laughed uproariously at everything I said. A bit naive, I missed signals telegraphed throughout twelve-courses of truffle-enriched madness, and agreed to let the little professor drive me back to my hotel — a long drive during which he continued to roar with laughter as I hissed the word, “NO!”

I may have been “intoxicated and confused” by the “provocative and lascivious” fonduta served in Ferrara, yet I somehow managed to keep my clothes on.

In The Seducer’s Cookbook, a wiser Auntie Mimi leads equally inexperienced innocents through such perplexing moments: “If you cannot get frankfurters or sausages that are truly skinless,” she warns, “peel them before slicing.”

Sage advice is also provided for planning a menu to seduce another woman’s husband. Baked oysters and beef in lemon-parsley butter are necessary — along with restraint — because, Mimi wisecracks, “he can get home-cooked food anytime and maybe that’s what he’s bored with.” After the filet, “he may feel so at home he’ll slip right into bed with you without ever noticing the difference.”

Ouch!

As for the seduction of ones’ own spouse, Mimi yawns, “God knows it’s convenient — no running around at odd hours with strangers, no need for subterfuge, no getting out of warm beds on cold nights to go home… ”

HAVE YOU HEARD THE ONE about the traveling salesman and the beet farmer’s daughter? Yes, all of this does have a certain ‘take my wife, please’ quality — yet Mimi Sheraton is a meticulous and very tasty (pun intended) food writer. She can be elegant and specific: “Give her a big balloon-shaped goblet full of a golden dry vermouth, with one piece of ice and a long curl of orange peel… ” and “…untended meat burned black as charcoal, so that it looked like some fossil unearthed from the ruins of Pompeii.”

Sheraton also provides full menus lovingly laid out as a course of action for weakening the resistance of your prey — as well as reviving those who have suffered “a surfeit of food, attention, and you.”

SUNDAY BREAKFAST
Grilled orange slices with brown sugar and butter
Scrambled eggs with caraway seeds and pan-fried ham slices aromatic with ginger
Freshly baked corn sticks with sweet butter and cottage cheese,
honey or orange marmalade
Coffee, and plenty of it

Surprisingly, Sheraton’s most instructive — and endearing — writing appears buried in the text of her recipes with recommendations to apply toppings “over the asparagus, spreading nuts with the back of a spoon;” “dry the meat and wipe it with a cloth dipped in brandy;” and, “sprinkle with a few chopped pecans if you have them around.”

From Sheraton’s In My Mother’s Kitchen: Recipes & Reminiscences, the charming note that “soup should cook at a smile,” is a personal favorite.

MIMI SHERATON IS A SERIOUS WRITER. The provocative and commercial quality of her early work accurately reflects a time when suggestive (if not downright dirty-minded) artists like Lenny Bruce and Alan Sherman became money-making recording stars in the league of a 1960s-era Barbra Streisand.

Sheraton is now the respected author of sentimental cookbook shelf classics like Visions of Sugarplums, The German Cookbook, and The Whole World Loves Chicken Soup — but she also co-wrote Borscht-Belt comedian Alan King’s bio, Is Salami & Eggs Better Than Sex?

After discovering Sheraton’s The Seducer’s Cookbook, I’m wondering if her sequel to The Bialy Eaters might not turn out to be Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Borscht, But Were Afraid To Ask.

After all, good food, served in appropriate ways, never goes out of style; and no matter what’s on the menu, Mimi Sheraton scores.

[Originally written for Jeannette Ferrary's workshop: Food for Thought]