Bücher veröffentlicht von Thomas Kelchner

In 1875, J.B. Morrow, editor of the Newville Pennsylvania Star and Enterprise, got the idea for a cookbook. He would solicit readers of his newspaper for their recipes and give a free copy of the proposed Newville Cook and General Recipe Book to the contributors. He got swamped. Readers sent him over 700 recipes!Half a year into the effort Morrow realized it wasn't going to be a quick project. It took until nearly the end of 1876 to finish printing the Cumberland Valley Cook Book. It was renamed somewhere along the line, probably indicating the expanded scope. The volume was a hit and three years later, Morrow published a second edition with 200 additional recipes.The recipes mostly were familiar American dishes of the day, largely desserts. However, among them were two recipes for something brand new in that day: shoo-fly pie (one was really a cake). They are the oldest documented recipes for the dish, preceding by at least 10 years the previous record.After the second edition came out, things got strange.The only existing copy of Morrow's cookbook is a THIRD edition. The Cumberland Valley Cookbook and General Recipe Book by the Ladies of the Cumberland Valley, Pennsylvania was PUBLISHED IN TOPEKA, KANSAS IN 1881. And Morrow's name is not on it.

A two-volume charity cookbook like this is a rarity. The best guess is that there have been "hundreds of thousands" of community and charity cookbooks (CCBs in the parlance of historians who study them) published in the United States since the first one -- The Poetical Cookbook -- in 1864. Since they have been small, local efforts in practically every town and hamlet in the U.S. for 150 years, nobody has really collected them all or counted them. Some, no doubt, have had multiple printings, but an entirely new edition, with a changed set of recipes would be hard to find.Chicamacomico Cookery, Volume Two, is a phenomenon for more than its "rare sequel" status. It documents local history and the people who made that history. It was published by volunteers in the Chicamacomico Banks Volunteer Fire Department Ladies Auxiliary about 10 years after an earlier group put together Volume One. Only seven contributors to Volume One (1970-1973) were listed among the 84 contributors to Volume Two (1980-1983). Volume One seemed to contain largely local recipes - many for the fish and shellfish that were caught locally. In Volume Two, though, the recipes that the Outer Banks cooks submitted included many from outside sources -- different regions and places on the Earth far from "the Banks."Also, the women who contributed to Volume Two were more inclined to use their own names rather than "Mrs." and their husband's name as they did in Volume One. The Banks clearly had seen the effects of the women's movement of that era.The two volumes are full of recipes that obviously were important to families in a tiny community, on a historic barrier island, in one of the most storm-swept places in the United States. They are unique and they deserve to be preserved. We hope that these facsimile editions will help keep alive the memories of the people and the recipes and a little bit of the history of Waves, Rodanthe and Salvo, North Carolina - a place that was once called Chicamacomico.