Recipes for the melting pot : the lives of The settlement cook book /
"As part of the second great wave of Jewish immigration to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Jewish women benefited from the Settlement Movement, a Progressive attempt to Americanize new immigrants through a variety of educational, athletic, and artist...
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
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New York :
Columbia University Press,
[2026]
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| Summary: | "As part of the second great wave of Jewish immigration to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Jewish women benefited from the Settlement Movement, a Progressive attempt to Americanize new immigrants through a variety of educational, athletic, and artistic programs. These programs included cooking classes, intended in part to introduce immigrants to American ingredients and foodways. The Settlement Cook Book came out of Lizzie Black Kander's cooking classes at the Milwaukee Jewish Mission which she helped found-and where she served as president for eighteen years. According to Milwaukee Jewish lore, Kander became frustrated with the amount of class time wasted by her pupils copying down the recipes and lessons. She thought she could create a pamphlet to sell to the greater community and subsequently give to her students at minimal cost. The pamphlet, published in 1903, went on to become a book that would see forty subsequent printings and sell over two million copies, becoming the most successful charitable cookbook in American history. It remains in print in multiple editions. Kander's instructions for American living reached well beyond the Midwest, making it unusual among fundraising cookbooks. A traditional bridal shower gift, this cookbook became almost ubiquitous in many mid-twentieth-century American kitchens. Nostalgically referred to in both Jewish and non-Jewish memoirs and discussed even in blogs and on TikTok today, The Settlement Cook Book enjoys a reputation as an invaluable reference, a culinary standby. Confirmation of this status could be seen when the 1976 edition was named to the James Beard Cookbook Hall of Fame, alongside The Joy of Cooking and The Fannie Farmer Cookbook. Evaluating the contexts of community cookbooks-particularly this one, which has appeared in so many editions and printings-is a way of gaining access to the general lifestyle of the communities that produced them. As cookbooks transform over time, their pages can reflect transitions from wood-burning stoves to gas to microwave technology, but they may also serve as a gauge for contemporary mores and etiquette of their time. As the cookbook reflected the community it came out of, both in taste and aspiration, we can ask what it meant to Kander and her contemporaries to eat like a Jew (or an American). Through her classes and the book they inspired Kander created an ideal of American domestic life that went on to influence generations of women. Examining Kander and her cookbook allows us to further our study of the Progressive Era by highlighting non-Protestant woman activists"-- Provided by publisher. |
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| Physical Description: | xii, 215 pages : illustrations. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780231566162 (electronic bk.) 0231566166 (electronic bk.) |