Edna Ferber will always be high on my list of Iowa’s unclaimed authors, those who spent at least part of their formative years in the Hawkeye State. It’s easy to overlook Ferber’s Iowa years, spent in Ottumwa, because Ferber HATED that part of her childhood, due largely to the antisemitism she encountered in a community of 14,000 people in the late 19th century. (I’ll write about this particular topic at some future date; here I wish to be more positive.)
Edna was one of two Ferber children, her sister Fannie, “Fan” to Edna, was three years older. They had what can best be described as a long-term tumultuous, dysfunctional relationship, although to their credit, they kept working at it, which, can be argued, only led to more contentiousness. Sigh.
In the early 1920s, a few years before Edna hit it big, her sister Fannie came out with a cookbook, entitled “Fannie Fox’s Cook Book”. (Fox was Fannie’s married name… and please note, this is Fannie FOX’S Cookbook NOT the “Fanny Farmer Cookbook”, which was much more successful.) Somehow, Fannie persuaded her becoming-famous sister, Edna, to write the foreword.
The cook book, then written as two words, was published a century ago, in 1923. It’s available for reading online, although it takes some searching, and can be purchased in printed form if you’re prepared to shell out one-hundred bucks, most likely an indication of rarity rather than quality, although it may be a bit of both.
Below I share foreword excerpts for insights from Edna’s perspective into post-war society. Mind you, Edna was remarkably independent, a feminist, and in many respects, a trailblazer. Her foreword is a wide-screen window into the world, specifically the world of women, a century ago. Of course, while it’s probably true of most forewords, this one says as much about the author as it does about the book and the era in which it was written.
I should also note for readers less familiar with Edna, she LOVED food… basically, everything connected to the dining experience, eating, yes, but also preparing food (although it should be noted, she had house staff throughout her career), and certainly serving food, including significant descriptions in her novels as well as in both of her autobiographies, written 24 years apart. The only full biography of Ferber, written by her grand-niece, includes an index entry, “—Edna Ferber, food, love of,” citing six different references spread over eleven scattered pages. Food and dining was a significant part of who she was, as you’ll quickly see below… lightly edited for brevity, with words / spelling as they appeared a century ago.
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“There was, in the household of my little girlhood, a book called Aunt Babette’s Cook Book*. It must have been frequently consulted. The margins of its pages bore frescoes, dadoes, and thumb marks of chocolate, flour, lemon juice, splattered white of egg, and dabs of whipped cream; flecks of dough and splashes of yolks, such as ornament any cook book in common use.
To look back on its recipes now is to feel something like horror at contemplation of an age that seemed devoted to wanton waste. ‘Now take ten eggs and the yolks of six more,’ orders one recipe, lavishly, ‘separating the whites and yolks. Add a pound of sugar, two heaping cups of butter. Throw in a pound of walnut meats and a pound of citron.’
At this point the eye of the modern cook bulges. She experiences a feeling of mingled unbelief, disapproval, and drooling appreciation such as comes to us when we read an account of one of those prodigal feasts of the early Romans. Aunt Babette’s Cook Book scorned any food whose preparation called for less than dozens of eggs, pounds of nut meats, cups of butter. The very words she employed had a rich and careless sound. ‘Throw in,’ she commands. Aunt Babette’s green covers held treasures of savoriness, but surely indigestion followed in her wake.
One pictured her as an ample, hospitable, gingham-aproned soul, who was always pressing food upon you long after you were surfeited. This lady belonged to those dear dead days when eggs were ten cents a dozen, butter twenty cents, and fresh chickens a shilling a pound.
For many years the cookery of the United States was considered, next to English cookery, to be the worst in the world. But slowly, inevitably, the American cook has taken this sauce from France, this stew from Hungary, this soup with marrow balls from the Jewish cookery, this chicken dish from Germany, this pastry from Denmark, and combining them with the best of the native dishes, has evolved a cookery which is on the way to being the most delicious and varied in the world, -- a piquant and fascinating mixture of all the nations.
The cook or cook-book writer of a past day was supposed to be a beaming, motherly person of comfortable curves, whose white hair framed a plump face flushed with the heat of the kitchen stove. The really excellent American cook of to-day is likely to be the alert, well-dressed, and witty young woman who played bridge opposite you the evening before. Hers is the modern method, and in point of digestibility, savoriness, and tempting appearance her products cannot be excelled. She is the middle-class matron whose table is varied, appetizing, but thrifty.
The authors of this book have attempted (and successfully) to compile such recipes as would be acceptable to the intelligent and capable woman who takes pride in her table and who is not above feeling a thrill of pleasure when a guest demands to know just how this dish or that one has been made. She does not, however, feel that woman’s place is with her head in the oven. Here you will find shrewd, expert, and delicious blending of foods. Not an egg is wasted, not a spoonful of butter nor an ounce of sugar. “It’s a one-egg cake,” says the cook of to-day.
A point has been made of presenting the modern method of serving which combines a minimum of labor with the highest degree of excellence in flavor and appearance. There is introduced, for example, the platter service. We Americans used to eat with our central plate flanked by a flock of minor scoops, saucers, sauce plates, and vegetable dishes, much as a battleship is surrounded by a fleet of gunboats and destroyers**. In this book you will find the large central platter so arranged that the problem of conveying food to the table, and serving it, is decreased immeasurably.
… from EF’s foreword: “Any one knows a clever French chef can take a pair of well-worn overshoes, stew them gently for hours, cut them into pieces, and pour over all a rich, creamy sauce so delectable as to make you chase the last trickles around your plate with a bit of bread.” (Methinks these overshoes might be a challenge, even for those clever French!)
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The meat or fowl, on its platter, is surrounded by its accompaniment of potato, vegetable, and sometimes even a compote. The small side dish is banished. Here you will find anything from the homely potato boiled in its jacket to the platter of hors d’oeuvre looking like a garden in full bloom. Sandwiches are no longer two slabs of bread with a piece of meat between, but are transformed here into objects of beauty, with an added element of surprise.
Since the book was compiled by two*** modern, practical, and experienced young women who manage their own households, there is emphasis on left-overs, that problem of the thrifty housewife****. There are such necessary items as to what to prepare for the picnic lunch, so vital in these days of motoring, and detailed instructions as to preparation. There are menus for that festive and informal meal, the Sunday-night supper. Here you are told what to have at a children’s party by women who have had both children and parties most successfully.
Some of the recipes herein are culled from the finest Jewish cookery, which, for delicacy and flavor, cannot be excelled. The crumbling and toothsome torte made from the humble cottage cheese and the commonplace zwieback is one of these. It is called Zwieback Cheese Torte and is usually eaten to the accompaniment of choked murmurs of rapture. There are other recipes wheedled from the French chef of a famous Chicago restaurant. Every one of the recipes has been tried and proved.
The chief value of the book is that it avoids on the one side the stern rules of the diet fanatic, who is so busy with calories, measures, and food values that she forgets she is a cook, not a chemist, and the room in which she is working a kitchen, not a laboratory. It is a book for the modern, intelligent, and capable woman (or one who wishes to be), to whom her kitchen and table are important but not all-important; who can have guests without undue flurry; manage her housekeeping budget in a businesslike manner.
A properly written cook book should make interesting reading not only for a cook but for any one who eats and frankly enjoys the eating of well-prepared and appetizingly served food. The writers of this book take as much pleasure in the creation of a dish or the arrangement of a platter as they do in the planning of a gown or the decorating of a room. In it they have shown balance, good taste, and appreciation of the flavor of life. To follow it is to know modern American household cookery at its best.”
Edna Ferber
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* — The long title is, “Aunt Babette's Cook Book: Foreign and Domestic Receipts for the Household: A Valuable Collection of Receipts and Hints for the Housewife, Many of Which Are Not to Be Found Elsewhere”, first published in 1889, recently republished in 2018.
** — A reminder that World War I (not yet called that) had ended a short five years earlier. Note also six -- count ‘em, SIX -- references to “modern,” reflective of the post-war “roaring” era.
*** — Fannie’s cook book was accomplished “in collaboration with Lavina S. Schwartz,” whose name was on the cover, but not in the title.
**** — If left-overs were a “problem,” it may be because electric refrigerators are still a decade into the future.
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