We Gather Together: A Community Cookbook

The old adage “do not judge a book by its cover” comes to mind when I think about how most people view community cookbooks.  Simple in design with homespun touches, these gems are often overlooked and underappreciated. A community cookbook is defined as a body of work, created by members of a local community or organization with the intention to raise funds for their organization or another municipality (Lindgren, 2018). Community cookbooks are typically half page in size and the spine is constructed out of plastic or wire. All this is done to keep costs down and maximize profits for the intended organization or institution. The recipes in the book share stories about the people who submitted them and their families.

Community cookbooks have never been about making a personal profit, as those who donate a recipe or act as editor do not make money from their sale. Creating and contributing to a community cookbook is a selfless act, performed with the best of intentions. Frequently found in both community cookbooks and for-profit cookbooks, narrative essays introduce the recipe to the reader providing a chance for the author to tell their story. Many times, the contributor dedicates the recipe to the person who passed down the recipe or reflects on how much members of their family appreciate the dish.

We Gather Together is a community cookbook consisting of recipes from the residents of my town, Germantown, NY, both past and present. The proceeds from the sale of the books will benefit the local public library. Similar to other community cookbooks, this book is simple in design. We Gather Together, includes interesting and aesthetically pleasing artwork by illustrator Kit Fraser. The folk -art tradition of paper cutting is the inspiration for all artwork including the cover and chapter pages.

Background and history of Community Cookbooks

A Poetical Cookbook is widely accepted as the first community cookbook. Created by Marion J. Moss, and published in 1864, sales of the cookbook raised funds for Civil War hospitals (Castle, n.d.). It is important to keep in mind that this was still a period in history when women were prohibited from owning land and voting and upperclass women were simply encouraged to marry well.

Women involved in creating and selling community cookbooks in the Progressive Era (1890s-1920s) and the women who started the Suffragette Movement both understood how to work a system they were socially and legally barred from. The Suffragettes held tea parties in their homes, which was an acceptable form of socializing for women at the time. Their lives revolved around the private sphere of the home while men inhabited the public arena. While hosting tea parties in their parlors, the Suffragettes started to organize and spread their message. They even created a brand of tea called, Votes for Women, whose profits went into supporting the voting rights movement. The women who created cookbooks also stepped outside the prescribed norm and learned to sell advertising, get books published when they themselves were not allowed to own a copyright, and raise money for their chosen cause. Both sets of women worked the male dominated system to their own advantages brilliantly.

Building We Gather Together

 In producing this community cookbook, I cast a wide net in order to attract recipes that represent the residents as a whole.  To accommodate both young and older residents I set up two avenues for recipe submission. The first relied on email submissions to germantowncommunitycookbook@gmail.com,  while the second was a hard copy two-page submission form which was distributed around town. I relied on a local Instagram account that is popular among young residents, which advertised my project and included an electronic version of my submission form. A friend, who grew up in Germantown helped secure the bulk of the recipes through word of mouth. Her aunt’s friends in the senior living complex all utilized the paper copy of the submission form to complete their recipe submissions. I received up to eight recipes a piece from several of the women and men who live there.

The cookbook includes recipes I collected, as well a sample of recipes that were originally printed in four older Germantown community cookbooks. The cookbook includes a history of community cookbooks and as a preface for each heirloom book, a brief overview of food trends from the decade relating to the printing of that volume with recipes that reflect food trends of the time. The new recipes from older residents are similar to those in the Heirloom books. The use of processed and convenient food products is readily embraced as in ingredients such as Cool Whip, canned soups, vegetables and fruit.

The lack of diversity in the population of Germantown is reflected in both the old and new recipes. Even the “ethnic” recipes have ingredients that are readily available at any mainstream grocery store, since there are no specialty food shops in the area.  An example of this can be seen in a recipe for Hungarian Goulash in the 1953 cookbook that calls for frankfurters and tomato soup. These processed flavors tend to dull the taste of the final dish. Having said this, there is also a nice chapter in this book devoted to jams and jellies utilizing fruit from the local orchards. These recipes were an example of cooking local and celebrating a unique Germantown attribute.

 In a recent submission for Minestrone Soup by Pat Pielli, who lives in the senior living complex in Germantown, she lets us know that this was her mother-in-law’s recipe and that “everyone in my family loves it.”  In the directions portion of the recipe I included her instruction to soak the beans overnight because she warns that “Grandma used to say, soaking overnite they lose their gas power.” This homespun or, as some might say, folksy advice gives these recipes a personal touch.  However, Pat outdoes herself at the end of her Hearty Beef and Cheese Pie recipe, where the directions suggest that you “serve to loving… and handsome…. husband with a glass of chilled Asti- Spamonti… then make wild love.”

Another characteristic of community cookbook that sets them apart from commercial books are the quirky recipes that have been in a family and are not familiar to most outside of the clan. Grandma’s Boiled Cake, submitted by Donna Diehl comes to mind. She writes in her header that: “I forgot all about this cake until one day my mother asked me to go with her and tell her friends that there was such a thing as a “boiled cake”. My mother was a good storyteller and they thought she made it up!”

Conclusion

You can use a community cookbook to get a recipe idea but it is so much more than that. It takes a village to produce these books, and the flavor and uniqueness of that locality is what gives these books a special place on one’s bookshelf.

Works Cited

Castle, S. (n.d.). Why the best cookbook in your collection is your community cookbook. Southern Living.

Lindgren, M. G. (2018). UNXLD: American Cookbooks of Community and Place. Biddeford: Rubelais: Thought for Food.