51������

Nicole Stoner, MSt in History of Art and Visual Culture, recently won the Cambridge University Library Rose Book Collecting Prize for her remarkable collection of community cookbooks from the American South. The cookbooks - authored by women for women – are so much more than just recipes; they are rich with historical insights, personal reflections on Southern identity, and etiquette advice. They are an unintentionally honest perspective on how Southern women viewed themselves and their communities.

In the interview that follows, Nicole shares her love of collecting and explains how community identities can be traced through the recipes and the handwritten notes added in.

Can you tell us a bit about where you grew up and how this informed your books?

I am from Virginia but my father was in the US military so I grew up in the Middle East. Everything American was always very interesting!

What made you start compiling the books?

My mother gave me a copy of our family cookbook about 20 years ago; her grandparents had 11 children and two of her cousins put out a request to the extended family to provide recipes and reminiscences so they wouldn’t be lost. I was very intrigued, I had no idea this was a thing, but I started noticing similar books in charity shops.

Many of my books have handwritten notes or other recipes pasted in, so they were clearly loved and used—bringing them home sometimes feels like a rescue mission. I also find recipes that fell out of popularity, and it’s nice to give them a new life.

What's the idea of a community cookbook? What stories do they tell?

Community cookbooks are cookbooks that are privately written and distributed, by and for amateur home cooks. My collection focuses on community cookbooks from the American South that were published from 1921 through 2016, all created by women. Most of them have historical comments or reflections on being Southern, and a lot of them have advice on etiquette. This is a rare genre of women performing for the female gaze in ways that are unintentionally honest about how they aspired to be seen.

My cookbooks fall into three categories: books that were created as family memorials by one or two women; fundraisers written by cookbook committees; and cookbooks that focus on “upholding the gracious past,” also written by committees. As you might expect, there is a lot of cross-over in the categories so I look at the intent and messaging in how the authors present themselves.

In the South, the ‘gracious past’ is colonial/pre-Revolutionary War for Virginians or antebellum/pre-Civil War for Deep South states with plantation culture, and there’s a lot of wistful references to how things were done in the ‘good old days’. Representation is very limited: there is a lot of identification with upper middle class or the American equivalent of the landed gentry, and very strong identification with being white. African Americans are represented either in appropriation of Black foodways, or in depictions of manual labour, and some of the commentary is racist. It’s unfortunate, and frankly off-putting, but I also think it is important to acknowledge the existence of unattractive aspects of community identification, then and now. 

I should note Black women in the South also produced community cookbooks, but those are very rare and valuable—I would love to add some to my collection for better representation, but I've never come across one in a local shop and acquiring them from antiquarian booksellers is out of my price range. 

Do you cook from your books?

I do cook from my books, being mindful of how close the ingredients are to what would have been available 100 years ago, and how kitchen environments have changed. For example, the size of dishes is smaller, so I use smaller pans and keep an eye on cooking times; flavours tend to be mild so I might add extra quantities of, say, pepper. One thing I find interesting is that a lot of baked goods are dry and crumbly - I think 21st century palates are used to much more oil or fat, which keeps baked goods moist.

How many books are there and does each have a theme?

I have 17 books in my collection and they’re all some variation on the theme of Southernness. The older books in my collection are very gendered in their assumptions about who would be interested in cooking; the newer books are more inclusive but still women-led in terms of control over recipe selection and book production.

For trends in community identities, I am looking for whether “making America great again” will start to show up in Southern cookbooks, and if so, what culinary-historical identity will be constructed. Are we going to reach all the way back to colonial/antebellum South again, or to Jim Crow segregation of the 1930s? Do communities favour progressive identities from the 1960s civil rights movements, or perhaps respond to the Great Migration of the early 20th century? Will people still want to align with upper social classes in any era, or is populism more appealing now? It comes down to how people see themselves, and how they want others to see them.

What's your favourite recipe and why?

Every Southern cook has Their Family’s Biscuit Recipe (Which is Better Than Your Family’s Biscuit Recipe Although I Would Never Say That to Your Face) and I think American biscuits are the food most associated with the South. When I find an old community cookbook, I check the biscuit recipes and judge accordingly.

In the picture of me in the prize announcement, I’m holding my family cookbook and a big basket of my grandmother’s biscuits. Those really are the best biscuits.

What does it mean to you to win the Prize?

Winning the Rose Prize was absolutely amazing. I almost didn’t submit my collection because I thought the rare books specialists at the University of Cambridge would not be interested, but the committee was very kind and asked a lot of good questions. My family is very excited too!

The annual was endowed in 2006 and is believed to be the first of its kind offered by any European university.

RECIPE FOR SOUTHERN BISCUITS

360 g plain flour

22 g/5 tsp baking powder

6 g/1 tsp salt

50 g shortening, unsalted butter, or a mix – see note

360 ml milk, buttermilk, or water – see note

Preheat oven to 230 degrees C/gas mark 8; grease and set aside a baking sheet.

In a large bowl or using a food processor, mix flour, baking powder, and salt.

With fingers or a fork, or with a few pulses of a food processor, cut the shortening or butter into the flour mixture.  It should look like a bowl of dusty peas.

Add the milk all in one go and until you have a shaggy dough, then turn the dough out, fold it a few times, and press or roll it to 2 cm thickness. Cut your biscuits out—about 7 cm is standard but you can cut them larger or smaller, and you can make them square or round.  If you have excess dough from cutting, pat the scraps into biscuits.

Place on the sheet and dab the tops with a little shortening or butter. If the biscuits are close together, they will touch when they bake and you can just pull them apart when they’re cool.

Bake on the greased sheet for about 10 minutes or until the tops are golden brown.

NOTE:

For vegan biscuits, or for a tender and crumbly biscuit, use shortening (e.g., Crisco in the US, Flora or Trex in the UK).  If you use butter, make sure it is very cold before trying to cut it into the flour mixture.

For the liquid, buttermilk will create a slightly tangy flavor and cause the biscuit to rise higher but milk is fine too. Water will work too, but your biscuits will be flatter and drier.