Cookbooks as Resources for Rural Research

Cookbooks as printed primary sources can provide insight for historians of rural America. The humble volumes carry important evidence about people's interactions with their environment and the society around them. Most are produced by women and thus offer significant messages about gender as well. Although most cookbooks came from cities, some do exist from rural areas. Analyzing their structure and content shows much about how rural housewives thought about food and about their communities. The Fannin County Home demonstration Club's Cook Book (1933) is an excellent example of a rural cookbook that can be parsed for evidence about life in Northeast Texas during the Great Depression.