New Orleans Cookbook Bibliography - Tulane University

New Orleans Cookbook Bibliography

Compiled by the New Orleans Culinary History Group

Edited by Susan Tucker, M. A. Johnson, Wendy Bruton, and Sharon Stallworth Nossiter

Introduction: A Brief History of New Orleans Cookbooks

It has been said time and time again: New Orleanians love to eat--and eat well. Clearly, there is also a class of New Orleanians who love to cook.

The books in this bibliography take this affection as their focus. Their compilers, cookbook writers of various backgrounds, have translated into words instructions and ingredients that have pleased those people who have dined at their tables. In turn, the list here is presented to give access to this simultaneous fondness and practicality in the form of recipes, memories, and, yes, even social relations inscribed in books published about New Orleans food from 1885 to April 2008. For each cookbook, members of the New Orleans Culinary History Group have provided a short abstract.

A few warnings should be made: Spellings sometimes vary, reflecting the preferences and prejudices of different cookbook writers and publishers, or even one New Orleans colloquialism versus another. We hoped to publish a complete catalog but have probably missed some books along the way. We used a 1966 bibliography, John E. and Glenna Uhler's The Rochester Clarke Bibliography, as our base1 and the catalogs of various research, public, and private libraries to add books published between 1966 and 2008. Our sincere apologies for any books we have missed.

In themselves, the cookbooks of New Orleans have both an imperial and humble history. The city's first written instructions on food came from France. The 1769 inventory of the estate of Sieur Jean Baptiste Pr?vost contained mention of two cookbooks, Le Cuizinier [sic] royal and Le M?nage des champs.2 Pr?vost, an official of the Company of the Indies, left these books to his Creole heirs.3

By the early nineteenth century, we find another French book, La Cuisini?re bourgeoise (1817) in a New Orleans home.4 And by the 1840s, two French books concerned with the

1 John E. Uhler and Glenna Uhler, The Rochester Clarke Bibliography of Louisiana Cookery (Plaquemine, LA: Iberville Parish Library, 1966). 2 French Superior Council and Judicial Records of the Spanish Cabildo Court Records, Numbered Proceedings, June 13, 1769, Louisiana Historical Center, Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans, Louisiana. Le Cuizinier royal is noted in the inventory as being a three-volume work, and was most likely a copy of Fran?ois Massialot's 1712 edition of Le nouveau cuisinier royal et bourgeois bound with a different title. The other book, written as Le M?nage des champs, was most likely Louis Liger's Le M?nage des champs, et le jardinier fran?ois, printed in various editions from 1711 through 1737. See George Vicaire, Bibliographie Gastronomique; a bibliography of books appertaining to food and drink and related subjects, from the beginning of printing to 1890 (London: D. Verschoyle, Academic and Bibliographical Publications, 1954). 3 Besides the records mentioned above, see items 190 and 192 listed in Edith Dart Price, "The Inventory of the Estate of Sieur Jean Baptiste Pr?vost, Deceased Agent of the Company of the Indies, June 13, 1769," Louisiana Historical Quarterly 9, no. 3 (July 1926): 445-498. 4 Menon, La Cuisini?re bourgeoise, suivie de l'office a l'usage de tous ceux qui se m?lent de d?penses de maisons. This book was published in many editions from 1746 onward. See also Barbara Ketcham Wheaton, Savoring the Past: The French Kitchen and Table from 1300 to 1789 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 98. Wheaton remarks that this was the first book to appear in France that was directed specifically to females.

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management of households were being sold in New Orleans. These books--Le Tr?sor des m?nages and La Petite cuisini?re habile--were most likely shipped to the city as unbound pages, bound here by a bookseller, and then sold with the imprint of la Nouvelle Orleans. The publisher of Le Tr?sor, A. Mame, often used conventions that allowed the inclusion on the title page of the words Chez l'auteur, rue __________. The blank following rue (street) would permit the address of a local bookstore or bookseller to be added. Containing mainly household remedies and gardening tips, Le Tr?sor's subtitle conveys an ambitious goal of providing information on gardening, getting rid of insects and other animal pests; the poultry yard, the upkeep of furniture and linen, etc., etc., and in general all the objects that can contribute to the advantages and amenities of life in town and in the country."

The preface to this compendium is signed by L.Fr, who was Louise B?ate Augustine Friedel or, as she sometimes signed her name, Louise-Augustine Utrecht-Friedel. This prolific lady was also the author of La Petite cuisini?re habile, though the title page of the latter book owned in New Orleans lists the author as a Mlle. Jeannette who dictated her recipes to others: Ecrit sous la Dict?e De Mlle Jeannette, Par un Gastronome de Ses Amis.5

English-speaking Americans and many other nineteenth-century settlers in New Orleans added their own written cooking legacies to this nascent tradition of New Orleans cuisine. Eliza Kneeland, who came from Pennsylvania by way of Georgia, carried with her a small book of her mother's recipes, prizing the making of fig preserves among other everyday dishes and delicacies.6 Food studies scholar Janet Theophano has shown how such journal-like efforts at preserving recipes became a record of the individuals connecting kinship and other alliances.7 Anne Sinkler Whaley LeClercq and Patricia Brady Schmit have shown how such books were particularly important to women who migrated from the East Coast to the plantation South. There is every reason to believe the household advice of mothers, grandmothers, as well as slaves and servants, was just as important in the city of New Orleans.8 Recipes later found in published New Orleans cookbooks suggest also that New Orleanians used copies of Mary Randolph's The Virginia Housewife; Englishwoman Susannah Carter's cookbook, The Frugal Housewife, amended for American ingredients; and others.9 Similarly, at least one nineteenth-century

5 Copies of these books are held by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin, and the Hoole Special Collections at the University of Alabama. See also Vicaire. 6 Eliza Kneeland, Manuscript Cookbook, 1817, Newcomb Archives, Newcomb College Center for Research on Women, Tulane University. 7 Janet Theophano, Eat My Words: Reading Women's Lives through the Cookbooks They Wrote (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 13. 8 Anne Sinkler Whaley LeClercq, "Daily Life on a South Carolina Plantation, 1855?1983: A Scrapbook Memory from Three Generations of Women," in The Scrapbook in American Life, ed. Susan Tucker, Katherine Ott, Patricia Buckler (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006), 42?59; Patricia Brady Schmit, Nelly Custis Lewis's Housekeeping Book (New Orleans: Historic New Orleans Collection, 1982). 9 Mary Randolph, The Virginia Housewife: or Methodical Cook (Baltimore: Plaskitt, Fite, 1838); Susannah Carter, The Frugal Housewife, or, Complete Woman Cook..., To which is added an appendix containing several new receipts adapted to the American mode of cooking (New York: G & R Waite, 1803). A good project would be to compare the recipes in various New Orleans cookbooks to the recipes in these books.

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family owned a copy of the first cookbook about French cooking widely circulated in the United States: Louis Eustache Ude's The French Cook (1829).10

The great chronology of New Orleans cookbooks gained its true start in 1885 when two cookbooks were compiled and published especially for visitors to the World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial (1884?1885). The first (by a few months), The Creole Cookery Book by the Christian Woman's Exchange, and the second, La Cuisine Cr?ole by Lafcadio Hearn, provide extensive listings of recipes proclaimed as unique to New Orleans. The word Creole, long in popular use, now came to be applied to cuisine.11 By the end of the nineteenth century, various aspects of New Orleans cuisine had been set down in print, incorporating oral traditions of Africans, Spanish, French, and other ethnic groups.

The first year of the twentieth century brought the landmark New Orleans cookbook, The Picayune Creole Cook Book--or, as it was entitled in its first four editions from 1900 to 1910 and in its last edition (1987), The Picayune's Creole Cook Book. Compiled and edited anonymously, the Picayune remains an encyclopedia of food customs, race relations, religious observations, and festivals. Published in fifteen different editions over the whole of the century, the cookbook is still useful and is still a favorite, as Phyllis Marquart shows in her section of this bibliography.

Another important early cookbook remains popular with those interested in the French language and Creole customs in Louisiana: C?lestine Eustis' Cooking in Old Cr?ole Days: La Cuisine cr?ole ? l'usage des petits m?nages (1904).12 This book is one of two about New Orleans food included in the seventy-six books chosen to represent the most influential American cookbooks from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth century by the Feeding America Project at the University of Michigan. The other New Orleans title included in this collection is Lafcadio Hearn's La Cuisine Cr?ole. No other American city is represented in the most influential list by two cookbooks.13

From the late 1930s through the 1950s, local writers Natalie Scott, Caroline Merrick Jones, Ethel Mae Usher, and Mathilda Geddings Gray continued to add to the lengthening culinary canon. These were community leaders, much like the women of the Christian Woman's Exchange had been, but they took a more playful approach to the culinary legacy. During this period, Clementine Paddleford, a writer for the New York

Recipes then, and to a certain extent now, are copied from, as well as transformed in, generations of cookbooks. 10 Louis Eustache Ude, The French cook, or, The art of cookery developed in all its various branches, (London: John Ebers and Co., 1829). 11 Rien T. Fertel, Creole Cookbooks and the Formation of Creole Identity in New Orleans (Paper delivered at the 21st Joint Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Food and Society and the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society, New Orleans, June 4-8, 2008). 12 This book was chosen by Michigan State University's Feeding America Project to be included among the seventy-six books deemed to be the most important and influential American cookbooks from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. The other New Orleans title to make this list was Lafcadio Hearn's La Cuisine Cr?ole. 13 Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project, cookbooks/ (accessed August 8, 2010).

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Herald Tribune, became another great enthusiast for the city. She added the perspective of an outsider and promoted New Orleans cuisine to a wide national readership. For example, she encouraged the work of African-American Lena Richard, who was the owner of gumbo and sweet shops, cooking schools, and catering businesses. With Paddleford's help, Richard gained a New York publisher for the second printing of her locally published cookbook, The New Orleans Cook Book (1940). Richard was the first African American from the city to publish a cookbook. Almost simultaneously, Paddleford also focused on the cooking of Antoine's Restaurant, thus cementing the view that New Orleans had both a daily cuisine available at low cost and haute cuisine. As Paddleford noted, New Orleans offered a love affair with all kinds of food, an ambiance usually found only in European cities.14

This pattern of attention from both outsiders and insiders expanded in the late twentieth century. In the tradition of Lafcadio Hearn and his consultation with locals came such writers as William Kaufman, Sister Mary Ursula Cooper, and Emeril Lagasse.15 And in the tradition of the insiders from the Christian Woman's Exchange came the anonymous female home economists employed by New Orleans Public Service (NOPSI) who compiled small brochures of recipes distributed in utility bills, on streetcars, on buses, and later in cookbooks.16 Other writers with local ties were Deirdre Stanforth, Nathaniel Burton, Peter Feibleman, Marcelle Bienvenu, members of the Junior League, John DeMers, Susan Spicer, and Tom Fitzmorris. All these cookbook authors brought, and still bring, much attention to New Orleans food.

The bibliography here traces this written journey of New Orleans food.17 We hope that it will allow others to trace their own memories of food in the city, to bring to their tables dishes from the City of Cooks.

14 See Richard in this bibliography. Clementine Paddleford, Recipes from Antoine's Kitchen: The Secret Riches of the Famous Century-Old Restaurant in the French Quarter of New Orleans, New Orleans: This Week Magazine, 1948; Paddleford, New Orleans is Keeping the Croxignolle Secret, New York Herald Tribune, March 10, 1954; Paddleford, How America Eats (New York: Scribner, 1960). 15 In the period 1970 to the present, more than 250 cookbooks on New Orleans food were published-- almost three times the number of cookbooks published before 1969. While this is reflective of a national trend, this figure needs further study to show how food traditions are continued or disrupted by various forces. 16 NOPSI and the company that came next, Entergy, collected some of these recipes in publications such as Creole Cuisine (1951), Creole Favorites (1966, 1971), and From Woodstoves to Microwaves--Cooking with Entergy (1997). 17 We have focused on New Orleans with minimal attention given to Louisiana cooking in general. Similarly, the culinary researcher will have to look in other sources for a complete view of Creole cuisine; for example, the Cane River area and the Gulf Coast also developed their own distinctive Creole cuisines, but that is not within the scope of this bibliography.

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