Cooking is Community: A Look at Historic Maine Community Cookbooks

Maine Historical Society - Programs Podcast

Recorded August 10, 2021 - Community cookbooks: you know them and you probably have at least one in your kitchen! Collections of home cooked recipes put together by church groups, synagogues, school groups, political organizations, band boosters, and even biker gangs, these cookbooks are endlessly interesting and rich with stories. Existing at the intersection of technology, home economy, food safety, advertising and marketing, they bring more than 150 years of American history to life. Authors Margaret Hathaway and Karl Schatz, together with Don Lindgren of Rabelais Books in Biddeford, collaborated on publishing the Maine Bicentennial Community Cookbook in 2020 and now they continue to explore and share their love of these unique publications with their podcast "Cooking is Community." Don has been collecting and researching community cookbooks for more than a decade, and in 2019 published volume one of a multi-volume exploration of the American community cookbook, titled UnXld: American Cookbooks of Community & Place . Each episode of the podcast looks at a single community cookbook from Don's collection and examines it as a physical object, a reflection of community, and as a source of recipes from a very specific time and place. Season one is all about community cookbooks from Maine! In this program Don, Margaret, and Karl discuss their podcast and the fascinating stories they’ve come across researching this delicious local history. Purchase their book from the MHS Store.