Jessamyn Neuhaus - Manly Meals and Moms Home Cooking: Cookbooks and Gender in Modern America

MANLY MEALS
AND
Moms Home Cooking

COOKBOOKS
AND GENDER
IN MODERN
AMERICA

Jessamyn Neuhaus

2003 The Johns Hopkins University Press

All rights reserved. Published 2003

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1

The Johns Hopkins University Press

2715 North Charles Street

Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363

www.press.jhu.edu

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Neuhaus, Jessamyn.

Manly meals and moms home cooking : cookbooks and gender in
modern America / Jessamyn Neuhaus.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8018-7125-5 (hardcover)

1. Cookery. I. Title.

TX714.N52 2003

641.5dc21

2002006465

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Introduction
The Purpose of a Cookery Book

PART ONE
A Most Enchanting Occupation:
Cookbooks in Early and Modern America, 17961941

One
From Family Receipts to Fannie Farmer:
Cookbooks in the United States, 17961920

Two
Recipes for a New Era:
Food Trends, Consumerism, Cooks, and Cookbooks

Three
Cooking Is Fun:
Womens Home Cookery as Art, Science, and Necessity

Four
Ladylike Lunches and Manly Meals:
The Gendering of Food and Cooking

PART TWO
You Are First and Foremost Homemakers:
Cookbooks and the Second World War

Five
Lima Loaf and Butter Stretchers

Six
Ways and Means for War Days:
The Cookbook-Scrapbook Compiled by Maude Reid

Seven
The Hand That Cuts the Ration Coupon May Win the War:
Womens Home-Cooked Patriotism

PART THREE
The Cooking Mystique:
Cookbooks and Gender, 19451963

Eight
The Betty Crocker Era

Nine
King of the Kitchen:
Food and Cookery Instruction for Men

Ten
The Most Important Meal:
Womens Home Cooking, Domestic Ideology, and Cookbooks

Eleven
A Necessary Bore:
Contradictions in the Cooking Mystique

Conclusion
From Julia Child to Cooking.com

I would like to thank a number of colleagues who provided assistance with this work. Kelly Austin, Elazar Barkan, Kelly Douglass, Erika Endrijonnas, James Gilbert, Barbara Heber, Michelle Ladd, Harvey Levenstein, Jan Bluestein Longone, Kathy Peiss, and Shasta Turner proofread, offered suggestions, listened to paper presentations, and responded to questions, phone calls, and emails with the utmost attention. This project greatly benefited from their insights. Robert Dawidoffs close questioning about my theoretical framework considerably improved the final product. Special thanks to Janet Brodie for her careful reading of early drafts and for her gracious, rigorous, mentoring. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewer at Johns Hopkins University Press, copyeditor Brian R. MacDonald, and senior acquisitions editor Bob Brugger for their helpful suggestions concerning structure, content, illustrations, and citations.

Kathie Bordelon, the archivist at McNeese State University, provided me with several important documents essential to my work on Maude Reids World War II scrapbook-cookbook. She also helped me locate an excellent photo of Reid. Dan Nelson and Lisa Buchinger Aldrich shared their family cooking memories with me and substantially enriched my understanding of how individuals use and interpret recipes. Jennie German shared original research and an amazing historical document with mean act of generosity all too rare in the academic world. I particularly want to thank Peg Bracken, who allowed me access to her fan mail and who is every bit as delightful in person as she is on the page.

I am deeply grateful for the family members who cheered me on during this project, especially my sister and best friend Alison Rash. I am especially indebted to Alison for her meticulous proofreading. I also want to thank my brother-in-law Jason Rash, my aunt Anna Carnathan, and my in-laws Bill and Irene Butdorf and Liz and Rich Mang for assistance with the illustrations, for the words of encouragement, and for the flowers. I could not have completed my research without the hospitality of my grandparents, Phil and Alison Payne. They eased my twelve-hour days at the Library of Congress immensely with their affection, humor, and flattering interest in this project. I owe a special debt to my grandmother, who pampered me with body-and-soul-restoring dinners throughout my stays. My aunt Dana T. Payne made several trips to the Library of Congress in order to help me procure the illustrations for this book: thank you, Tia!

My parents, Dr. John Neuhaus and A. Lori Neuhaus, sent me cookbooks, secondary sources, anecdotes, and newspaper articles and did more proofreading than any parent should ever have to do. They also provided my infant son with a month of outstanding childcare during the final revisions of this project. Their belief in education, their belief in family dinners, and their belief in me have very much shaped my life and this book for the better, and I give them my most heartfelt thanks.

Lastly, I must thank my husband and fellow hang-glider Douglas Butdorf. I could ask for no better cooking, dining, travel, parenting, and life partner than Douglas. Without his support, in more ways than I can name, I could not have completed this work.

I dedicate this book to Solomon William Neuhaus, born January 11, 2001. I hope that by the time he is old enough to wield a frying pan there will be nothing unusual or remarkable about a man in the kitchen.

MANLY MEALS
AND
Moms Home Cooking

The purpose of a cookery book is one and unmistakable. Its object can conceivably be no other than to increase the happiness of mankind.

Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrads simple faith notwithstanding, cookbooks serve numerous and sometimes obscure purposes. By publishing cookbooks, churches and community groups raise funds; food-processing companies and kitchen appliance manufacturers promote their products; health advocates instruct readers on the nutritional benefits of a particular food regimen; celebrities and chefs foster their personal popularity; and traditionalists help preserve their cultural, ethnic, or family heritage. As historical documentssupplying information about the publishing practices, available ingredients, food fashions, or household technology of the pastcookbooks reveal much about the societies that produce them. Moreover, the purpose of a recipe collection may not be unmistakable. Cookbooks contain more than directions for food preparation. Authors often infuse their pages with instructions on the best way to live ones lifehow to shop, lose weight, feed children, combat depression, protect the environment, expand ones horizons, and make a house a home. Cookbooks thus reveal the recipes for living created by authors, editors, cookery experts, and corporations in the past. They show how foods, food preparation, kitchen labor, gender, class, and race have intersected in the United States.