Cook Book

The Ladies Aid Society of St. Paul's English Evangelical Lutheran Church

Published by The Ladies Aid Society of St. Paul's English Evangelical Lutheran Church, 1916

About this Item

Paperback, front cover design by "CB" (not credited within), 8-1/2" x 5-5/8", 137 pp. + blank leaves for notes. Some wear and creasing to wraps, a few pencil markings to text, generally clean and solid. Good condition. Generally, a traditional community cookbook with contributor names after recipes, and an emphasis on sweets! On page 72, however, we see "Chinese Cook's Recipe for Pop-Overs" contributed by Sing Lee. Certainly, a racist joke of the era rather than an indication of Chinese-American inclusion in this church, it starts with "You takee him 1 egg, 1 lit cup milk." and after putting the pop-over in the oven, "Now you mind you business. No likee woman run look at him all time." Although authors like Paul Lawrence Dunbar would use dialect as a form of subversion, the dialect in this recipe comes from the vaudeville circuit, where "key words and phrases [let] the audience understand immediately which ethnic type was intended." (Jones, Gavin. Strange Talk: The Politics of Dialect Literature in Gilded Age America, p. 172). Vaudeville acts used dialects to portray an ethnicity in order to make their jokes; unimaginative imitators thought the dialect itself was the humor. Seller Inventory # 002539

Bibliographic Details

Title: Cook Book

Publisher: The Ladies Aid Society of St. Paul's English Evangelical Lutheran Church

Publication Date: 1916

Binding: Soft cover

Condition: Good