Women’s Club Cookbooks

Floral Club Cookbook

The Floral Club Cookbook was created in 1928 by the garden club of Vicksburg, Mississippi. The cookbook was supported by advertisers and followed the relatively new convention (in Mississippi) of listing the ingredients in columns above the recipe. One of the older cookbooks in Southern Miss’ collection, the cookbook is well worn, providing evidence of its use. There are cup stains on page 41, handwritten corrections on page 69, and there were various newspaper clippings and handwritten recipes throughout (now available at the end of cookbook). Garden club cookbooks raised funds for beautification projects and were often passed down from generation to generation.

Proof of the Pudding

Proof of the Pudding was published in 1965 by The Shelby Woman’s Club of Shelby, Mississippi, a socially elite group of women whose fathers and husbands owned plantations or businesses in the community. Woman’s clubs in Mississippi met for tea, read about current affairs, sponsored community activities, and sometimes engaged in politics, although often the politics were subtle. The segregated Chinese school in Shelby had been closed for some time when the Shelby Woman’s Club invited James Chow, a successful local businessman, to submit Chinese recipes to the cookbook, but invitation signalled that a willingness to view Chow and his wife as leading members of the community.

The cookbook is arguably one of the most attractive published in Mississippi in the twentieth century. The cookbook was printed in the United Kingdom on moss colored paper and is illustrated with stunning line drawings of women struggling to cook (a subtle acknowledgement that many of the club’s members depended on hired Black women to prepare the nightly meal).

United Daughters of Confederate Veterans Cookbook

The reprinting of the United Daughters of Confederate Veterans cookbook by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (U.D.C.) in 1951 erased a rift that existed in 1911 and claimed a governor’s wife as one of their own. When treasured cookbook was first published (with a red cover and held together with ribbon), the United Daughters of Confederate Veterans (a sister organization to the Sons of Confederate Veterans) was a rival to the fast expanding U.D.C. Forty years later, the rivalry had been long forgotten and the U.D.C. was happy to claim Mrs. Edmund F. Noel, the wife of a governor, and Miss Anabel Powers, daughter of one of the founders of the state’s most powerful newspaper, as members. It was not the only way the reprinting sought to obfuscate the past. Without explanation, the cookbook includes two images of public transportation, one depicting a mule drawn cart and the other a “modern” bus. Unmentioned at a time when Black Americans were looking for ways to challenge segregation of public transportation was that both the old and the modern forms of transportation were segregated.