Cookbooks

This section is focused on all the cookbooks in the WVRHC Rare Book Room that are written by Black/African Americans. The extended collection includes ten cookbooks that are on African cooking and recipes passed down from enslaved cooks on plantations.

Title: In Pursuit of Flavor
Creator: Edna Lewis, Mary Goodbody
Date Created: 1988
Abstract: Edna Lewis recounts her experience growing up watching her mother cook for others, and growing up in a small farming community named Freetown, founded by her grandfather and his friends after they were emancipated from slavery. She emphasizes how grateful she is to have had the ability to pick and cook pure vegetables and fruits untainted by chemicals, and her main goal with this cookbook is to try and recreate the pure taste of her childhood food using present time ingredients for others to eat. This source is beneficial for research on Edna Lewis and Natural Cooking.
Source: WorldCat

Title: A Good Heart and a Light Hand: Ruth L. Gaskins' Collection of Traditional Negro Recipes
Creator: Ruth L. Gaskins
Date Created: 1968
Abstract: This cookbook begins with Ruth Gaskins memories of an elder Black woman named Revish Rice, affectionately referred to as “Mama Rice," whom she frequently watched cook during childhood. Gaskins recalls how the kitchen was the heart of the home, and the pot would be ready with food from 5pm to 8:30pm for the family and friends to pop in and eat at any given time. She emphasizes the community that was built around Mama Rice’s kitchen and how important good Black food was. The recipes are all traditional Black recipes Gaskin learned and sourced from her own mother, Johnnie Mae Knapper, and Mama Rice over the years. This source is beneficial for research focused on Black Food and Black Cooking, and Black community.
Source: WorldCat

Title: The Edna Lewis Cookbook
Creator: Edna Lewis, Evangeline Peterson
Date Created: 1972
Abstract: Edna Lewis begins this cookbook with her own history of growing up in the Freetown farming community, her initial desire to be a designer but being offered to open a restaurant instead. Her goal with this cookbook was to publish recipes that were fresh and simple for the average person to make and enjoy. Although she kept the recipe ingredients generally easy to find, Lewis included sources for some ingredients that would be harder for the average person to find on their own. This source is beneficial for research on Edna Lewis and Natural Cooking.
Source: WorldCat

Title: Soul Food Cookbook
Creator: Jim Harwood, Ed Callahan
Date Created: 1969
Abstract: Harwood begins the cookbook with a brief history of Black Soul Food in America, crediting its roots to Native American, European and African cooking. He explains how Soul Food cooking came from the circumstances of enslaved Africans on plantations being given the unwanted parts of animal cuts by their enslavers, and how from those unwanted bits they created foods that would become delicacies. This source would be beneficial for research about Black History and Southern/Black cooking.
Source: WorldCat

Title: Vibration Cooking: Or, The Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl
Creator: Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor
Date Created: 1970
Abstract: Verta Mae is an American Anthropologist from Fairfax, South Carolina. She describes her disdain for cookbooks written by white people that discredit (or do not credit at all) the influence that Black and African people have had on food and cooking. She introduces her main topic of “de-mystifying” food, because of how convoluted and exclusive modern culinary arts has made cooking to be. Verta Mae was born into a Gullah family and intertwines her life and experiences with the recipes she shares. The recipes are simple and straightforward. This source would be useful for research about Verta Mae and her life, Black and African American cooking, and Black and African Experiences.
Source: WorldCat

For all Cookbook Citations, see the following page: