160-year-old cookbook gets a brand new edition

Back in 2019, we wrote about the work of Juli McLoonen and Jan Longone, the University of Michigan Special Collections Curator and Adjunct Curator, to boost interest in the oldest known cookbook authored by a black woman. Longone found a copy of A Domestic Cookbook by Malinda Russell, published in 1866, at the bottom of a collection of donated books. For years, a digital version of the book was available on the University of Michigan’s website.

This week we learned that University of Michigan Press is releasing a brand-new edition of the cookbook. You can purchase a copy for $24.95 USD at the publisher’s website. Rafia Zafar, a retired professor at Washington University (in St. Louis, MO) wrote a forward for the new edition. She told NPR that “People always say reading cookbooks are like reading novels, but reading cookbooks are also like reading ethnographies and travel books.”

A Domestic Cookbook provides insight not only on what types of foods were popular at the time, it also shows us a broader picture of how people lived with its section on household hints and formulas. In its pages are ‘recipes’ for barbers shampooing mixture, cologne, cures for corns, treatment for restoring hair to its original color, and treatment for tooth ache. The section is a reminder that so many things we purchase today – as well as a significant portion of health care – was relegated to the home.