Southern Plantation Cooking
Gunderson
2000
Submitter: I recently came across Southern Plantation Cooking in my high school library’s cookbook section. It’s part of a series that includes titles called Civil War Cooking: The Confederacy, Civil War Cooking: The Union, and Cooking on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The cataloging-in-publication summary states that this title “[d]iscusses the everyday life, family roles, cooking methods, most important foods, and celebrations of people on southern plantations before the Civil War.” And while the book does do the job of discussing these elements of Southern plantation life, it’s the tone that I find awful.
A recipe for “Feather-light Buttermilk Biscuits” next to a sidebar on “Plantation Children” pretty much represents this book’s horrifically tone deaf presentation of information. And that table of contents: Puttin’ Up Pork (!). Christmas in the Big House (!). Big Times in the Slave Quarters (!). Some of the hand drawn illustrations are borderline offensive at best. Also the outdated language of (e.g., plantation, slave) desperately needs to be updated (labor camp, enslaved person). And at the end of the day, who is this book for? I think it would do more harm than good in either the cookbook or history section and I was delighted to stamp it “WITHDRAWN.”
Holly: This was published in 2000???
Awful Library Books 