Synopses & Reviews
It is not wise for a man who can get sea-sick in a rowboat on a mill-pond to attack a Japanese dinner just after a seventeen days' voyage across the Pacific. I was just that unwise, and for that reason perhaps can do but scant justice in this Land of the Rising Sun, to a soup in which floats bits of strange fishes from the vasty deep, unknown green things and an island of yellow custard; to slices of many colored raw fish, tough cocks' combs (real ones) or even to the stewed chicken which at this dinner at least had been shorn of everything except bones and tough sinews. The other day I tried it again with no better success, and now with the prospect of rice for food three times a day in the field around Port Arthur and no bread (there can be no more serious deprivation to a Southerner) I am suddenly asked to think of a Kentucky table and that turbaned mistress of the Blue Grass kitchen, a Kentucky cook
Synopsis
African American cooks were not strangers in the kitchens of the Old South, but white southerners often failed to acknowledge their contributions. One of the first exceptions was Kentucky socialite Minnie C. Fox, who recognized the significant influence and importance of the African American cooks and wrote The Blue Grass Cook Book, first published in 1904.
From biscuits and hams to ice creams and puddings, this cookbook is a collection of over three hundred recipes from family and friends, including black cooks, near Minnie Fox's Bourbon County, Kentucky, family estate and her Big Stone Gap, Virginia, home. In Fox's time, the culinary history of black women in the South was usually characterized by demoralizing portraits of servants toiling in "big house" kitchens. In contrast, The Blue Grass Cook Book, with its photographs of African American cooks at work and a passionate introduction by Fox's brother, respected Kentucky novelist John Fox Jr., offers insight into the complex bond between well-to-do mistresses and their cooks at the turn of the century.
Toni Tipton-Martin's new introduction provides in-depth commentary on the social, cultural, and historical context of this significant cookbook. She presents background information on the Fox family and their apparently uncommon appreciation for the African Americans of their time. She reveals the vital role of the black cooks in the preparation and service required in establishing the well-known Southern hospitality tradition.