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Though her upbringing in California was sprinkled with foods
reminiscent of her family’s origins in the South, Toni
Tipton-Martin says that “precious few” of her favorite foods
“qualified as southern.” That made her, she says, “a
casualty of the Jemima code,” which she defines as something
that classifies the “character and life’s work of our
nation’s black cooks as insignificant.”
She set out to change that.
In many libraries, cookbooks by African-American authors are
lacking. “Even,” says Tipton-Martin, “the southern cookbooks
were silent on the subject.” So she began to specifically
collect cookbooks written by black authors, containing the
knowledge and recipes of black cooks. As her collection
grew, so did her understanding and she began seeing how
“cooking changed, and cooks changed with it.”
From an obscure 1827 cookbook - the first one published by
an African-American author (and a man!) - Tipton-Martin
realized that many black cooks “existed in the culinary
shadows as far as cookbook writers were concerned.” Much of
their work was probably credited to white owners or
employers.
Technological advances in the early 20th century altered how
meals were made; science entered the picture, too, as did
household worker’s unions – the latter, to the frustration
of white employers, which is something African-American
cookbooks quietly reflected. By mid-century, the early Civil
Rights Movement could be spotted in black cookbooks of the
day. Soul Food enjoyed new appreciation in the 1960s from
hippies, flower children, “feisty black cooks,” and people
of all races.
By the 1980s, African-American cookbooks were penned by
football stars, gardeners and experts alike. Says
Tipton-Martin, “it was the cooks’ time to shine” although,
even in today’s kitchen, “the times are not yet postracial.”
There are, as I see it, three main reasons why you’d want
The Jemima Code on your kitchen bookshelf.
First, author Toni Tipton-Martin's history is a surprising
one. Reading her discoveries of cookbook subtleties and
social mores alongside recipes through the years feels like
opening a multi-layered gift, and her evolution of the Mammy
figure is also fascinating. Second, those recipes she found?
Though there aren’t a lot of them here, the ones that peek
out through the pages are classic and easy to follow.
And finally, there’s a treasure-trove of pictures inside, of
cooks at work and of the cookbook covers themselves, making
this large-sized book one that readers will want to carry
with them from kitchen to living room, countertop to easy
chair. You’ll scarcely know what to look at first, or what
to cook next, making The Jemima Code a book you will
crave. |
