Book Review of A Domestic Cook Book by Malinda Russell

A Domestic Cook Book: Containing a Careful Selection of Useful Receipts for the Kitchen by Malinda Russell is the oldest known cookbook published by a Black woman. Self-published in 1866, the only known extant copy belongs to the University of Michigan, part of the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive. While a cookbook may seem an unlikely choice to review in a literary magazine, I accepted the University of Michigan Press’s invitation to review the 2025 re-publication because, based on my experience as someone who spends much more time cooking than writing, I understand that there is often a story running through the food that people prepare and consume.

Writer, historian, and gourmande Janice Longone is also part of the story of A Domestic Cook Book. Beginning in the 1970s, Longone hosted Adventures in Gastronomy on public radio station WUOM in Ann Arbor, Michigan and was a founding member of the American Institute of Wine & Food. She served as a resource to famous chefs when they needed esoteric or unusual cookbooks. Longone obtained her copy of A Domestic Cook Book from the personal collection of Helen Evans Brown, a famous California chef. Its prior history is unknown.

Malinda Russell was a second-generation freewoman born in eastern Tennessee. At age 19 she set out for Liberia but her travel plans were thwarted when her money was stolen by a member of her party. Stuck in Lynchburg, Virginia, she began working as a cook and companion. She married, became a mother, was widowed, and moved back to Tennessee. There, she kept a boarding house and pastry shop, but was once again the victim of a robbery that propelled her to another new home, this time in Paw Paw, Michigan. It’s not clear from Russell’s autobiography whether the robbery attack was racially motivated, but given her statement that she was “compelled to leave the South on account of my Union principles,” they may well have been. Robbed of property and without other support, she decided to write a cookbook “with the intention of benefiting the public as well as myself.” Her book contains 265 recipes, most of which are for cakes, pies, puddings, and other sweets, which is not surprising given that she ran a pastry shop. She includes a few recipes for savory foods and home cures, for example “Dentifrice” and “Barbers’ Shampooing Mixture.”

In one of the book’s two introductions, scholar Rafia Zafar wrote, “as an ambitious Black person in the post-slavery era, Russell had almost no career paths and few options for entrepreneurship.” Yet, “by publishing a collection of recipes, Russell could advertise her culinary expertise as well as proclaim her literacy and self-reliance.” As such, A Domestic Cook Book is a descendent of two literary forms already familiar to Americans of her time: the slave narrative and the cook book. Russell was never enslaved, but she gestures to formerly enslaved peers and the invisible labor that domestic servants provided.

In the brief autobiography that prefaces her book, Russell wrote, “I learned my trade from Fanny Steward, a colored cook, of Virginia, and have since learned many things in the art of Cooking.” She cites the popular cookbook “Virginia Housewife” as another of her sources. One can assume that some of the recipes are inherited from other cooks and other recipes may have been Russell’s own creations. In any case, writing such a book was an unprecedented endeavor for a Black woman at that time, one that declared the difference between an invisible servant and an expert. Russell was the latter.

With few exceptions, the ingredients in Russell’s recipes are familiar and available. Reading through the recipes, I have a feeling that the baked goods coming out of home kitchens nowadays are not very different from those made a century and a half ago. However the written recipes are unlike what we find in modern cookbooks. Bake times, temperatures, and pan sizes are not given. Measurements are minimal (and sometimes arcane, i.e. a gill). They are very scarce on instructions and often only list ingredients. For example:

Cream Cake

One and a half cup sugar, two cups sour cream,

two cups flour, one or two eggs, one teaspoon soda; flavor with lemon.

That’s the whole recipe. A lot of knowledge is assumed. It reminds me of someone I knew who wished she could bake biscuits like her aunt, and her aunt’s response was if a person spent 50 years making biscuits, as she had, they would no doubt make fine biscuits as well! As a writer, I value the written word as the best way to transmit knowledge, but these recipes remind me that there are kinds of embodied knowledge that cannot be taught through writing. Physical activities like playing an instrument, carving a sculpture, and baking bread are passed from one person to the next through example and practice. On the other hand, without having written her cookbook, Malinda Russell’s repertoire would be lost to history. Both types of communication matter.

I wanted to honor Russell’s work by attempting a recipe. I opted for a savory recipe, since I know the chemistry of baked goods is important and I did not want to make something that might turn out badly! I chose her “Ham Omelet.”

Ham Omelet

Fry the ham about two minutes into a little hot fat, beat the eggs,

season with salt and pepper; mix a little flour and water into a batter,

and stir into the eggs; turn this over the ham, and turn quickly.

My omelet turned out well. I’ve never stirred flour into eggs to make an omelet before and it didn’t make much difference, but on the other hand I didn’t really know how much to use. I always include cheese in my omelets (none of Russell’s recipes use cheese), but it was good with just the ham.

My favorite aspect of the book was reading through the many titles and thinking about the incredible variety that human creativity can produce. Variations on a theme is a really generative form! And one of the pleasures of baking and cooking is to try something new.

A Domestic Cook Book is published in an open-access format and is freely available here: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.12837641