This antique fundraising cookbook has quite a personality.
Council Bluffs, Iowa served as a critical railroad hub that connected the Eastern US to the Western parts of the country. The city served as a jumping-off point for a wide array of immigrants and emigrants who sought their fortunes during the California Gold Rush, oversaw the linking of the East to the Western US as the Eastern Terminus for the Transcontinental Railroad, and acted as a gateway to the Plains during the Homesteading movement.
The original plot of land for the Broadway Methodist church was donated by a former gambler, Civil War entrepreneur, and veteran who, after having experienced a spiritual awakening, purchased the land under one of the many local saloons in town and donated it to the church in perpetuity. The congregation quickly began building and expanding as their numbers grew. In the early 1900s, the church found itself in significant debt related to building project delays. This cookbook was likely written and printed as a fundraiser by the Ladies Aid Society to help pay off the mortgage and fund programs to aid local children.
Many community cookbooks of this period were simply collections of recipes, but this cookbook has more going for it. It is an early example of the effective use of advertising to cover printing costs and drive revenue across multiple advertising segments. I have never seen a book that charged household brands to advertise their products (in special sections and within the recipes themselves) and then also charged local suppliers who carry those brands a small fee to be listed in sections on where to find them. These were some clever women indeed.
This book also contains several interesting indices on common terms used in early-American cooking (what makes an egg deviled? what is a guava?), common weights and measures used at the time, as well as some additional fun surprises representative of the times.
But, my favorite thing about this book is that the first recipe is a cheeky two-page tome on how to roast a husband.
Please read if you are considering purchasing this cookbook:
At the end of each chapter, the authors placed a unique line drawing to "fill in" free space. For the most part, these are line drawings and other decorative elements that were popular at the time. On page 142 the authors chose to place a swastika symbol at the end of the chapter. We want to acknowledge that in a contemporary context, the swastika represents a terrible chapter in human history that remains very troubling and continues to ignite fear and anxiety in many. We would also like to place its specific use in this cookbook within a larger historical context.
Prior to the mid-1930s, the swastika had been used for millennia as a symbol of good luck and prosperity. Many major American brands used it regularly including Coca-Cola, The Boy Scouts of America, and Carlsbad Beer. A magazine sent to American Girl Scouts was named Swastika and the organization even sent swastika pins to girls who sold enough subscriptions to other families. The American military and Britain's Royal Air Force even used the symbol. Around 1920 it was adopted by anti-Semitic political organizations in Germany and it ultimately fell out of common use in the mid-1930s in conjunction with Hitler's rise to power and the West's entrance into World War II.
As this cookbook was written around 1905, it is reasonable to expect that its placement was intended as a positive and hopeful message to the reader.
