Category Archives: 18th century

Great American Women Cookbook Writers in Picture Book Herstories

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Count on  Deborah Hopkinson, a distinguished author of children’s non-fiction, to take on the challenge of introducing two giants of American culinary herstory in picture book biographies.  Her subjects are Amelia Simmons, whose American Cookery (1796) was the first of its kind and Fanny Merritt Farmer (1857-1912), author of the best-selling Boston Cooking School Cookbook  (1896), which in various incarnations  reached a 13th edition in 1990.  Not having led adventurous lives, painted innovative artwork, made major advances in science, or written famous fictions, the two women had to be largely reinvented to be worthy of remembrance.

Fannie Merritt Farmer (1857-1915), the first to write recipes with precise quantities measured in standardized equipment in the Boston Cooking School Cookbook (1896), was a product of the domestic science movement.  She came from a well-educated Boston Unitarian family and was expected to attend college.  Those plans were upended by a paralytic stroke (or polio) she suffered at age sixteen.   She regained enough strength in her twenties to learn cooking and operate a boarding house known for its bill of fare out of her mother’s home.  Although mostly confined to a wheelchair by thirty, she still pursued a busy and successful career teaching, administering the Boston Cooking School, founding her own school, and improving nutrition and care of invalids.

Fanny in the Kitchen. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2001. (Cotsen)

Fanny in the Kitchen could have been the inspirational story of a physically challenged female icon, but Hopkinson chose instead to dream up a story revolving around the daughter of Mrs. Charles Shaw, Fannie’s employer of  who recommended she attend the Boston Cooking School. Fannie cooks like an angel, much to the dismay of Marcia Shaw, who feels she has been displaced as her pregnant mother’s helper.  Fannie, as realized by illustrator Nancy Carpenter, has the briskly efficient no-nonsense air (and turned-up nose) of Mary Poppins.  She is kind and attentive enough to see that Marcia likes being in the kitchen and wants to learn.  Marcia’s lessons give her the idea of writing everything down to make it easier to retain the art and science of cookery.  Her pupil’s mastery of cake baking coincides with her departure for new horizons.

Fanny in the Kitchen.

Independence Cake. New York: Schwartz & Wade Books, [2017]. (Cotsen)

Almost no biographical information survives about Amelia Simmons beyond a few tidbits in the cookbook.  Hopkinson’s solution?  Admit up front that she’sl Inventing a credible backstory for the “American orphan” that is  a “revolutionary confection.”   It goes like this: her father perished in the war of independence and her mother died shortly thereafter of smallpox, leaving their daughter poor and friendly. The wives of the town elders decide that rather than making the municipality responsible for her maintenance, a family will take her in as a “bound girl,” presented by Hopkinson as a kind of mother’s helper rather than a contractual form of slavery.   Stalwart  Amelia walks into the Beans’ chaotic home, where two of the six boys take bites out of apples and toss them aside like colonial Ramona Quimbys.   Without missing a beat, she takes over household management from their overwhelmed mother.

This is a cheerier and more palatable take on Miss Simmons’ slightly sour explanation of her qualifications for writing American Cookery.  Being “reduced to the necessity of going into families in the line of domestics,” she possesses “the more general and universal knowledge” a female needs to be of service to her employer, the “Lady of fashion and fortune.”  Simmons’ advice that an orphan in service must maintain a character for strict virtue, coded language for the unpleasant reality that she will have no protectors to forestall the unwanted advances of the master or his son is given a pass by Hopkinson,

Independence Cake.

Independence Cake.

She does, however, assume that Amelia Simmons intended to rise above her gallingly low social position.   Having learned to read by helping one of the little Beans with his letters,  when asked by Mrs. Bean how she might assist her,  Amelia replies that she wants to master the art of American cooking so she can share it with her fellow citizens.  But first she has to build upon a foundation upon English recipes, then advance to variations using American ingredients like winter squash, molasses, and corn meal, testing them on the hungry Bean family.   A successful afternoon tea where the town ladies sample Amelia’s divine cakes and strawberry preserve, leads to an invitation to bake a cake as a gift for display on the occasion of George Washington’s inauguration.  That “plucky patriot” Amelia outdoes herself by producing thirteen cakes, one for each of the new states, lavishly decorated with gilt.  Our first president pronounces his slice “Delicious.”

Of course, there is not a word of truth in this pretty tale of the new nation.  There is nothing distinctively American about Amelia’s independence cake, whose recipe is very close to almost any English recipe for  a yeast-raised great cake, with its huge quantities of flour, butter, eggs, brandy and “plumbs”—raisins, currants, and citron.  If Hopkinson had slipped in more nuggets from American Cookery—Amelia’s praise of shad, her suggestion that raising rabbits was a sure money-maker, her distaste for garlic, her recipes for what looks like a good old pot pie, a Christmas butter cookie flavored with ground coriander seed, or candying watermelon rind as a substitute for citron—there wouldn’t have been much of a story, however mouthwatering such details might be to the adult reader with a fine palate.

At times these two picture book biographies seem to be turning back the clock, even though there is never even a whisper of a suggestion that homemaking is the only path for girls– or ought to be. They do, I think, suggest to young readers that the kitchen was a site of empowerment for women in previous centuries and that ought to be remembered and honored as such, even if producing light, delicate biscuits will never be in one’s skill set.  This model of female advancement has not yet outlived its usefulness, but rather morphed in surprising ways in the twenty-first century.  Last week the New York Times Food Section ran an article about Arab women, their careers outside the home stymied, who have found an alternative calling demonstrating home cooking on YouTube food channels.  Pleased and surprised to win millions of subscribers and earn respectable incomes, they find great satisfaction teaching others the secrets of  making delicious food.

Fanny in the Kitchen.

Before Viral Animal Videos: Andrew Lang’s Animal Story Book (1896)

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The Animal Story Book. New York: Longmans, Green, 1896. (Cotsen 33275)

Any old family vacation house by the sea should have a neglected cache of old books somewhere and I discovered one in the  second story bedroom, where  I picked out The Animal Story Book edited by Andrew Lang.  It looks exactly like one of his Colour Fairy Books because H. J. Ford, the main illustrator of the set, decorated this volume as well.  His design of a huge lion roaring at the moon on the dark blue binding is still imposing even though the gilt has faded on the shabby cloth.

I expected more  selections about animals famous in Classical literature like Alexander the Great’s horse Bucephalus or Androcles’ lion.  Instead travelers’ tall tales about blasting off the heads of gigantic pythons or the predations of blood-thirsty packs of wolves are carefully balanced by ones about animal loyalty and sagacity.  One about a friendship between man and beast, another about an unlikely bond between species, and a third about a perfidious bird and obedient dog are worth sharing.

Here is a delightful anecdote about Sadi, the Indian elephant in  the 6th Duke of Devonshire’s menagerie of exotic animals:

 This lucky captive had a roomy house of its own built expressly for it in the park, a field to walk about in, and a keeper to look after it, and to do a little light gardening besides.  This man treated the elephant (a female) with great kindness, and they soon became the best of friends.  The moment he called out she stopped and at his bidding would take a broom in her trunk and sweep the dead leaves off the grass; after which she would carefully carry after him a large pail of water for him to re-fill his watering pot—for in those days the garden-hose was not invented.  When the tidying up was all done, the elephant was given a carrot and some of the water, but very often the keeper would amuse himself with handing her a soda-water bottle tightly corked, telling her to empty it.  This she did by placing the bottle in an inclined position on the ground and holding it at the proper angle with her foot, while she twisted the cork out with her trunk.  This accomplished, she would empty all the water into her trunk without spilling a drop and then hand the battle back to her keeper.

Sadi died in 1829 and is supposed to have been buried at Chiswick, although the site of her grave has not been found.

“A Strange Tiger,” the biography of a famous tiger sent as a gift to George III in 1790 and resident of the Tower Menagerie, comes from the Rev. William Bingley’s Animal Biography in three volumes, first published in 1803 and reissued multiple times in the 1800s.

Unlike most of its tribe, the little tiger soon made itself at home on board ship, and as it was too small to do much harm, it was allowed to about loose and played with anybody who had time for a game.  It generally like to sleep with the sailors in their hammocks, and they would often pretend to use it for a pillow, as it lay at full length on the deck.  Partly out of fun, and partly because it was its nature so to do, the tiger would every now and then steal a piece of meat, if it found one handy.  One day it was caught red-handed by the carpenter, who took the beef right out of its mouth, and gave it a good beating, but instead of the man getting bitten for his pains, as he might have expected, the tiger took his punishment quite meekly, and bore the carpenter no grudge after.  One of its favourite tricks was to run out to the very end of the bowsprit, and stand there looking over the sea, and there was no place in the whole ship to which it would not climb when the fancy took it.  But on the whole, the little tiger preferred to have company in its gambols, and was especially fond of dogs, of which there were several on board.  They would chase each other and roll over together just like two puppies, and during the ten month or so that the voyage from China lasted, they had time enough to become fast friends.  When the vessel reached London, the tiger was at once taken to the Tower, which was the Zoological Gardens of those days.  The little fellow did not mind, for he was always ready to take what came and make the best of it, and all the keepers grew as fond of him as the sailors had been.

This sounds quite unbelievable, but historians of the wild animal trade during this time have established it was normal to give the animals their freedom on board ship unless circumstances warranted otherwise…

“Signora and Lori,” which Leonora Lang translated from the 10th number of Deutsche Blaetter (1867) is a variation on those fables in which one clever but unscrupulous animal takes advantage of  a more amiable one.

A German gentleman owned a handsome parrot who was a great talker and a poodle Signora Patti named after the great soprano.  He trained the dog to fetch a basket at the command, “Go to the baker.”  When she dropped it in front of him and patted the floor with her paw, he would drop money into it, which was the sign for her to run to the shop and return with cakes.   Sometimes her master sent her without any money, saying “On the tick.”  The baker would fill the order and put it on account.  Either way, the Signora was rewarded with cake.   The clever parrot quickly learned the commands and turned the situation to its advantage.

But it was not only for pastime that Lori exercised his gift; the cunning bird used it for the benefit of his greedy beak.  It began to happen often to the master to find that his private account-book, carefully kept in the smallest details, did not agree well with that of his neighbor the baker.  The Signora, declared the baker, had become most accomplished in the art of running up a long bill, and always, of course, at her master’s orders.  Only the master, when he looked over the reckoning, growled to himself: “My neighbor is a rogue; he chalks up the amount double.”

How very much was he astonished, then, and how quickly were his suspicions turned into laughter, when he beheld, through a half-open door, the following absurd scene.

It was one fine morning, and Lori sat upon the top of his cage, calling out in his shrillest tones: ”Signora, Signora!” The poodle hastened to present herself before him, wagging her tail, and Lori continued, “go to the Baker.”  The Signora fetched the little basket from the place, and put it before her tyrant, scratching her paw on the floor to ask for money.

“On tick!” was Lori’s prompt and brief remark: the Signora seized the basket, and rushed out of the door.  Before long she returned, laid the basket, full of the little cakes before the parrot, and looked with a beseeching air for the reward of her toil.

But the wicked Lori received her with a sharp, ”Get out,” putting her to” flight, and proceeded to enjoy his ill-gotten gains in solitude.

The situation surely demanded that Lori be punished.   If it is any consolation, the anecdote is  more good-humored than La Fontaine’s well-known verse fable, “The Monkey and the Cat,” because the duped animal isn’t hurt (the cat who pulls the roasting chesnuts out of the fire for the monkey is badly burned).

Lang’s avuncular introduction has not aged very well: “We now present you (in return for a coin or two) a book about the friends of children and of fairies—the beasts.The stories are all true, more or less, but it is possible that Monsieur Dumas and Monsieur Theophile Gautier rather improved upon their tales….There ought to be a moral; if so, it probably is that we should be kind to all sorts of animals, and, above all, knock trout on the head when they are caught, and don’t let the poor things jump about till they die.”  The portrayal of Indigenous peoples, South Asians, and Blacks in word and image leave something to be desired by today’s standards.  But at least Lang graciously credits contributions by others, including his indefatigable wife Leonora, who provided “all the rest.”  How the appetite for these kinds of stories about animals became so beguiling to people that they crossed media is the subject for another time.