As part of the Penn State University / Monash University Great Rare Books Bake Off 2024, I will be presenting in a free virtual lecture and discussion on “Creating Cookbooks, Creating Community.”

Today, the term “community cookbook” refers a distinct type of modern book: a book of recipes compiled by a group, often to commemorate an event or fundraise for a cause. Yet cookbooks have been compiled by communities and networks for centuries. Some of the oldest Western medieval cookbooks have evidence that they were crafted with the help of multiple people inspiring, cooking, and writing the recipes. Early modern recipe books were regularly compiled from the contributions of family and friends and served as physical representations of those communities. Those ties were often passed down through generations within families, and even moved with recipe book writers as they experienced and established new communities through travel and colonization. Cookbooks and recipes were material reminders of where people came from and who they wanted to be. Our modern community cookbooks are not a far cry from this deep heritage in which food and recipe-writing connect people and commemorate relationships regardless of time and place.