Page 12 - United States of Pie

the ceiling was low, the lights flickered, and there was an ever-
present chill. One day, Brian suggested that I take a look at the
library’s cookbook holdings. It had never occurred to me that a

university library would even have a cookbook collection, there
among the treatises on philosophy and critical theory.
I didn’t waste any time. The next day, I headed straight for the
stacks that housed the cookbooks, excited to check out some big,
inspiring books full of lush photography and tantalizing recipes. But
the cookbooks lining the shelves looked nothing like that. Instead of
the glossy doorstoppers filled with color-saturated photographs that I
was used to, few of these cook-books even had dust jackets. Their

spines were worn; some were even spiral-bound. Their pages were
yellowed and softened.
I pulled a stack of books at random from the shelves. I dropped my
satchel on the floor and sat down beside it, leaning my back against
a bare wall. That first day I read for hours, completely lost in the

cookbooks. There were books written by farmwives for farmwives,
housekeeping guides, cooking manuals for newlywed brides, books
produced by church groups and ladies’ auxiliaries. Many of them had
not been checked out in years, decades even—if ever. They were so
much more than collections of recipes; each one was a little window
into a world now gone, a historical record. By reading Mrs. Porter’s
New Southern Cookery Book from 1871, I learned how she culled a

chicken and how she boiled the lightest, most tender dumplings. I
was able to catch a glimpse of what her everyday life entailed.
Although many of the books were more than a century old, they
somehow still seemed so modern. The recipes were based on local,
seasonal ingredients. Many of the books contained chapters on
canning and preserving. “Nose to tail” dishes were common. These

weren’t fashionable books, though. They were sensible, aimed at
women who—usually by necessity—valued economizing, women
who avoided waste, who had to make do with the ingredients
available where they lived. And the result, almost as though by
accident, was nourishing, soul-satisfying food. They showed that our
culinary past was not about convenience food or TV dinners. It was
about simmering, sautéing, and baking real food for family and

friends.