OP: Plantation Cookery of Old Louisiana

$80 · Offered by Kitchen Arts & Letters · No longer available

Harmanson, 1944. Paperback. Very Good Minus. Author Eleanore Ott (1903–1978) dedicates Plantation Cookery of Old Louisiana (1938) to her grandmother, Mary Simmons Leggett, whose handwritten recipes served as the basis for this small, self-published book. The resulting cookbook illuminates the grand scale of cooking and management involved in wealthy southern households. Ott adds her own colorful commentary, sometimes noting the shortcomings of the original recipes, other times mentioning how custom or technology had changed. Her perspective, though, retains the mindset of an aristocratic landowner, and she seems to pine for the good ol’ days before the Civil War, an era she could have only known second hand. Offensive and oblivious words and phrasing are common. The recipes themselves, however, speak to those grand kitchens where extravagant and hearty comestibles were prepared, and a picture of a deeply rooted, proud culinary tradition emerges. You’ll spot the likes of cracklin’ bread, hoe cakes, chow-chow, ambrosia, and pork cake—a variation on fruit cake which includes salt pork. Indeed, the significance of porcine cookery to a southern housewife’s repertoire, along with the festivities and fuss over hog killing time, is emphasized. Pork recipes feature strongly. Among them: baked ham, pork chops and potatoes, backbone pie with dumplings, souse, three different pig’s knuckle preparations, sausages, smothered liver, and chitterlings. Fried chicken, squirrel pot pie, stewed

• Binding: Hardcover

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