Crazy for Cookbooks

A perfect place for some of the Minner family's barbecue sauce. Photo by Vorarlberger Botschaft/Pixabay

Cookbooks call to me. In libraries and bookstores, they beckon with their elegant designs, aspirational photography, and the implication that, with their help, I too can learn the art of making pastel-colored macarons or slow-cooked, Japanese soul food. Often, I don’t make anything I see in these books, but I do learn from them. The three Korean books I checked out recently inspired me to buy Gochujang (red chili) paste and inadvertently create the hottest chicken I’ve ever sweated my way through eating. Never underestimate the heat of Korean spice.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved a good cookbook. Growing up, my formative titles belonged to my mother: The Joy of Cooking, The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, and the Betty Crocker Cookbook. The first recipe I ever remember attempting was blancmange, courtesy of Ms. Farmer. Inspired by the blancmange in a get-well basket that Jo brings Laurie in Little Women, my mother and I followed Fannie’s instructions and heated milk, sugar, vanilla, salt, and cornstarch. I discovered that this grand-sounding confection was just pudding, but so much better than the instant Jell-O and King’s Table Buffet varieties I was best acquainted with.

Until printing and literacy gained steam in Western culture, cookbooks were the province of a privileged few. One of the first cookbooks written in English was Forme of Cury, which came from the kitchen of Richard II in 1390. Likewise, throughout palaces and great homes of Europe and beyond, cookbooks were created as an aid for staff and a way for fancy folk to document and show off their luxe lifestyles. After emancipation, many white American Southern women were forced to study cookbooks when slave labor no longer put supper on the table. As the Industrial Revolution ramped up they became more widely distributed, and more technical and precise in their instruction. As the middle class grew, so did public hunger for cookbooks. In September 1950, impossibly easy casseroles and their brethren gave the Lord a run for his money when the Betty Crocker Cookbook made its heralded debut and reportedly outsold the bible that year.

D.C. Minner was, first and foremost, one of America's finest blues guitarists. Photo by Lisha Newman/Oklahoma Tourism

Some of my favorite cookbooks to peruse are compilations from home cooks put together as fundraisers for schools, churches, and various civic-minded organizations. In these, you generally find tried-and-true, down-to-earth dishes that won’t have you stabbing the pages in frustration with a spatula, which I have done because I have a flair for outrage. Thrift stores, libraries, and second-hand bookstores often are great repositories for these tomes of local culinary knowledge. I recently came across Dinner a l’Art at Half Price Books. This gem from 1980 includes the menus and recipes for dozens of fundraising dinners organized by the now-defunct Oklahoma Art Center Association, with themes ranging from from an Oklahoma Territories Dinner with Cheyenne wheat biscuits and sand plum jelly to an Okfuskee County Country Buffet that included corn pone, lasagna from Krebs, and a Boley moonshine cocktail. I also came across a copy of Oklahoma Cooks, which included directions for everything from tamale loaf to menthol-whiskey cough syrup. One recipe in particular from the late, great D.C. Minner caught my eye. He was well known for founding the Dusk ‘Til Dawn Blues Festival in Rentiesville, which served up plenty of smoked meats. So it was fitting that he shared his grandmother’s barbecue sauce recipe. In the spirit of passing on culinary knowledge from one generation to the next, I present to you his recipe from Oklahoma Cooks below.

Stay well and eat well!

Written By

Megan Rossman

Megan Rossman is Oklahoma Today's photography editor.