Lowcountry Cuisine Spring/Summer 2019

lowcountry cuisine LC 34 www.LowcountryCuisineMag.com | www.CharlestonRecipes.com preface, “to make it easy to teach the cook to send up the simplest meal properly dressed, and good of its kind … and with no more elaborate abattrie de cuisine than that belonging to families of moderate income.” Though uncommon in that era, the community cookbook trend ticked slowly upward, coming to a boil in the 1930s, exploding in the 1950s and going strong into the 1990s. Charitable community cookbooks have a way of bringing people together by solidifying a sense of community, sharing cherished family recipes, cataloging a unique history of popular local cuisine and cooking trends and providing home cooks a barrage of reliable recipes to make for nightly dinners and special occasions. Combined with the feel-good factor of raising money for a good cause, everyone is a winner. It’s hard to imagine how many lives have been changed or saved because of a comparatively simple thing like selling cookbooks, but the power of community is strong, and, when multiplied by the many churches, businesses and community groups who believe in their causes, the results are exponential. Chances are, if you are of an older generation and haven’t decluttered in a while, you have shelves upon shelves of these cookbooks – from church, work, the hospital volunteer group, your children’s schools, clubs, country clubs, volunteer organizations and more. Even in researching for this article, as I thumbed through the pages of some obscure copies, I saw familiar last names from generations past. Some quick texts, and come to find out, some of these recipes were from the “great” generation of friends’ families. Some descendants had never heard of the recipes – likely because dishes like congealed tuna salad mold have lost their appeal – and others recalled the family recipes with fondness, not realizing their great-aunt’s famous chicken tetrazzini recipe was still in existence. In a way, the cookbooks planted roots of their own, connecting us to pieces and people of the past. Many of these cookbooks were home-produced and offer little background as to the authors or what specific causes they supported, though they sometimes included recipes from well-known names of yore. “Hearty Hell Hole Vittles,” for example, appears to be home-printed, hole- punched and tied together with a piece of red yarn, yet it holds favorite family recipes from the likes of former Gov. “Charleston Receipts” has remained, resoundingly, the most popular of local community cookbooks. Photo courtesy of Arthur Ellis Photography.