Take the Juice of 9 Dozen Lemons

My friend Susan once told me that some people read cookbooks for pleasure, whether they're making any of the recipes or not, and I thought that was just plain crazy. Until I started doing it. I have developed a bit of an obsession with cookbooks. I absolutely love them, in part because I love food (as my bathroom scale can attest), but also because deep down, I'm convinced that if I can just find the perfect cookbook, I will become an amazing cook like my mother and my aunts. Aunt Vivian could quickly survey her fridge and pantry, grab a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and turn it into chicken and dumplings, with chocolate cake for dessert. 

Among the favorites in my kitchen library are community cookbooks, especially River Road Recipes: The Textbook of Louisiana Cuisine, published by the Junior League of Baton Rouge, and Charleston Receipts, the oldest Junior League cookbook in America (first published in 1950). I love the names of the recipes: Greenbeans A La Peggy, Fat Man's Misery, Church Street Nut Bread, Mrs. C. C. Calhoun's Chafing Dish Oysters, Mrs. Samuel G. Stoney's "Back River Pate" . . . And I love the little history lessons tucked into the food. You learn about things like gunpowder tea, roux, she-crabs, and hominy. The wild game section of Charleston Receipts has a dish that begins "rub opossum with salt and pepper." It also has a punch recipe that calls for, among other things, 10 bottles of brandy, 10 bottles of light rum, and 12 quarts of champagne. (FYI, it makes 600-650 servings, so if you've got a big family . . .:) Another punch recipe in the River Road cookbook calls for the juice of 9 dozen lemons. Nine dozen. And as you might expect, it has more than the usual number of recipes for gumbo, oysters, and shrimp.

What's truly great about these cookbooks is that you can hear, in the recipes, the voices of Southern cooks, past and present. And you know they're all trying to tell you something—that sharing wonderful food with other people fills you up in more ways than one. 

[Both cookbooks are available on Amazon.  River Road Recipes has several editions. The one I have appears as "River Road Recipes i" when you search Amazon.]

Comments

[Rhonda]

Valerie, I have been following your blog and I love it. I share some similar childhood memories. Especially the garden ones. I just had to tell you that I have the River Road Recipes cookbook. It is a great read. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and memories.

[valerieluesse]

Thanks so much, Rhonda! Glad you're visiting us "down at Mama's":)

[James]

Cookbooks are truly one of the best ways to learn about people.

[valerieluesse]

With those community cookbooks, I like to try and picture the cook, based on the voice of the recipe:)