COOKING THROUGH HISTORY with the Hofstra University Special Collections BY ANNA DEGOEDE
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rickety library cart full of aging books with handwritten titles, rarely touched, holds an unexplored wealth of vibrant, tantalizing cooking recipes and meals. The cookbooks found on this cart in Hofstra University’s Special Collections are yellowed with time; their brittle pages and spines feel as though they might flake off into pieces at any moment. In the reading room, which is accessed through the bottom floor of the Axinn Library, the cookbook authors are church and community members from different Long Island towns. Recipe origins extend from Hempstead to Islip and Bridgehampton, with themes ranging from Mediterranean to German and Jewish recipes. A majority of the cookbooks were brought into the collection by acquisitions curator Bronwyn Hannon, according to Michael O’Connor, a consultant
Hofstra’s collection of cookbooks is extensive and includes historical and cultural cookbooks from each of Long Island’s main towns.
with the Special Collections department. Although Hannon’s job was a casualty of the Covid-19 pandemic, the collection she curated remains a striking legacy of her work. The collection features a wide variety of cookbooks from Long Island starting as early as the 19th century. “The cookbooks from the 1800s were already at Hofstra, for whatever reason, because they are an essential part of Long Island history rather than for a cookbook collection specifically,” said Debra Willet, senior library assistant for the Long Island Studies Institute.
Reading chronologically through the titles is like taking a time machine and jumping through fragments of the past. Recipes titled along the lines of “World War I Cake” in one book and “Blitz Torte” in another serve as a reminder of the history contained in the unassuming spiralbound books. Although the large-scale consequences of wars provide the most obvious historical lens through which to read these cookbooks, a more subtle factor that influenced these recipes was the advancements in food science when each cookbook was published. Professor Sharryn Kasmir, chair of anthropology and director of the food studies minor at Hofstra, suggested that cookbooks often showcase common household cooking items that were common for the members of the organizations that compile the recipes for each book. “They’re kind of self-produced, self-published books, and those recipes contain items that would have been popular or common in households at the time,” Kasmir said. “Canned vegetables or Jell-O molds in the 1960s would be a really historical telltale.” In fact, Jell-O, which is known as gelatin in its unbranded form, rose to prominence in the 1900s and into the Special Collections cookbooks simultaneously. One book, Bridgehampton’s 300th anniversary cookbook, which was published in 1956, contained numerous recipes using gelatin. One of the several gelatin reOne of many carts full of cookbooks from the cipes in that cookbook was Lime Special Collections department. Sherbet, provided by Mrs. John Naylor. The ingredients list for this dessert is relatively normal from a modern perspective: water, sugar, PULSE
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