Food Friday: Lobster from Missouri

This Food Friday is from a cookbook I wrote about in June 2012, the Directory and Cook Book. First Baptist Church, Maryville, Missouri. Unlike other community cookbooks, it begins with a list of all the women in the Ladies Auxiliary of the First Baptist Church. Individual recipes are not attributed.

This cookbook is one of the best examples of how community cookbooks are city directories of women. This lists each woman and her street address.

From the collection of Gena Philibert-Ortega

For today's Food Friday I thought we should start the new year with some lobster. Here's a recipe for Lobster Salad.

From the collection of Gena Philibert-Ortega

As you can see the recipe is more of a narrative and not in the standard recipe format we are accustomed to.

A look at the entire page that this recipe comes from shows an ad for Maryville Granite Works. Looking at older community cookbooks, it's not unusual to see ads for funeral homes and memorial makers.

From the collection of Gena Philibert-Ortega

This is not the only community cookbook that is a Directory and Cook Book, I've seen others online. Do you have one of these examples from your ancestor's community?

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Food Friday: Directory and Cook Book Maryville, Missouri

from the collection of Gena Philibert-Ortega

The Directory and Cook Book compiled by the First Baptist Church of Maryville, Missouri is unique. It's the first one that I have seen that has "Directory" in the title. Many of these community cookbooks are directories of the recipe contributors and the  local businesses who have ads in the cookbook. These cookbooks serve as a  "directory of local women." In this case, that statement is completely true since two of the pages have the names and street addresses of the women from the Ladies' Auxiliary of the First Baptist Church of Maryville, Missouri.

None of the recipes are attributed in the cookbook. Like many cookbooks of this time period there is a little bit of  everything from recipes, to menus and household advice. In this case the advice includes caloric counts for food and what temperatures to cook food when doing  "oven cooking." After having done some research  on those listed in this cookbook, I would say it dates from 1925 to 1940.

As we bid good-bye to June 2012, consider trying the June Luncheon (#6) this weekend.

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