Church Cookbooks

Presbyterian Cookbook

The Presbyterian Cookbook was created by the Booneville Presbyterian Church of Booneville, Mississippi in 1948. The cookbook includes an introduction, possibly written by the Reverend Frank McGilvary Kincaid, that odd suggests that cookbooks are unnecessary since the best recipes passed down from cook to cook until they become, like folk songs, part of tradition.

The 1948 cookbook was the third printing and, like most reissued cookbooks, each edition added recipes without distinguishing the old from the new. But it is likely that the supplementary materials—a glossary of culinary terms, a diagram of how to set the table—do not date back to the first edition published in 1914 and older recipes were modernized so that the ingredients were listed before the instructions. At the end of the cookbook is an advertising section.

Sweets and Meats and Other Good Things to Eat

Sweets and Meats and Other Good Things to Eat was compiled and published in 1920 for Circle A, Trinity Episcopal Guild of the Trinity Episcopal Church in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Although the recipes were local, the title suggests that the guild woman had some help assembling and publishing the cookbook. A similarly titled cookbook was published ten years earlier in Corinth, Mississippi, and cookbooks with the same title and similar covers were published as far away as Texas. That makes Sweets and Meats a very early example of the role that community cookbooks publishers had in creating these local cookbooks, but it would not be until after World War II that large, national publishers came to prominence.

What’s Cookin’? in Red Star

What’s Cookin’? In Red Star was compiled by the Relief Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Wesson, Mississippi. The title and cover design (sometimes with a stock graphic and sometimes with a picture) were provided by Bev-Ron, one of a small number of community cookbook publishers that became influential in the postwar period. What’s Cookin’? In Red Star features the standard chapters and fonts used by the Bev-Ron company as well as helpful supplements on cooking for large crowds and advice on quick freezing vegetables, but the recipes were contributed by local woman and those who purchased the cookbooks made these cookbooks their own. The cookbook included extra pages for recipes to be added and there are handwritten notes and recipes throughout. The cookbook is not dated, but is assumed to be from the 1960s.