Kira Parrish-Penny ’24, the 2024-25 Edward Connery Lathem ’51 Special Collections Fellow, utilized her research skills and interest in studying the societal roles of American women to curate “Plate to Print.” This exhibit examines how cookbooks speak to the evolution of domesticity and womanhood throughout the history of the United States. It has been on display since March 17 and will remain in the Class of 1965 Galleries in Rauner Special Collections Library until June 13.
Each year, the Edward Connery Lathem ’51 Special Collections Fellow organizes an exhibit for the Rauner Library. Parrish-Penny wanted to continue to study the role of women in American society after completing her senior sociology thesis on the start of coeducation at Dartmouth. Influenced by her passion for cooking, she decided to investigate the cultural significance of cookbooks in American society.
On a balcony that overlooks the tall, glass walls that enclose Rauner’s archives, visitors can peer into three cases of cookbooks. The cases are titled, “History of the Cookbook: Manual and Textbook,” “Cookbooks, Community, and Connection” and “Cookbook as Aesthetic.” Each cookbook is accompanied by a short paragraph or two that comments on the importance of the work in the context of its respective case.
Inci Çetin GR reflected on how this exhibit sheds light on the significance of an activity that many people take for granted.
“Despite [cooking and eating] being something that we all do, seeing how personalized [the cookbooks] are, how historical they are or how time-place specific they are — I think it’s really fascinating,” Çetin said.
According to the exhibit sign, “Plate to Print” comments on the cookbook’s important role in connecting communities across generations. It shows how throughout American history, “cookbooks helped legitimate [domestic] labor and, consequently, usher in precursors to feminist thought.”
Special Collections Librarian for Teaching & Scholarly Engagement Morgan Swan has worked closely with Parrish-Penny ever since he met Parrish-Penny during Rauner’s virtual open house in 2020.
“Both I and Jay Satterfield, the Head of Special Collections, were impressed at the time by her assertive, insightful questions that highlighted her innate curiosity about the relevance of historic primary sources to modern culture,” Swan said.
For the exhibition, Parrish-Penny carefully selected each of the cookbooks on display from Rauner’s vast collection. She started her research by searching for materials under every cooking-related term she could think of and examining each cookbook she could find.
“I think a huge passion [I have] for Rauner and for [its] Special Collections is the way it brings history to life,” said Parrish-Penny. “If it doesn’t bring history to life, it is at least adding this really interesting angle to history that you don’t get from just hearing about it [by] physically feeling the objects and interacting with them.”
Parrish-Penny was particularly attracted to how earlier printed cookbooks gave “value to invisible labor or stories” of women in domestic roles, including cooking, in early American history.
“I think having [the cookbooks] printed gave a lot of weight to this really intense domestic labor that women were doing both in the kitchen and with childcare and also with the spiritual needs of the household,” Parrish-Penny said. “This whole [domestic] sphere of existence had been overlooked because it hadn’t been valued before, and, even now, is not entirely valued.”
United States cookbook publications began in the late 1700s. The first case in the exhibit presents America’s very first cookbooks that were published between 1728 and 1883. All of these cookbooks were written by women, for women. They often offered didactic advice to other women regarding how to run their households.
“For example, the [Catherine] Beecher books are almost textbooks on how to run a household that [go] into human anatomy, the functioning of the human body and the importance of essentially [having] good mental health as the housekeeper of the children,” Parrish-Penny said. “I think seeing [these cookbooks] written out showed other women — but also maybe men — the labor, the effort [and] the background knowledge that goes into [women’s labor in the home].”
The second case displays cookbooks with recipes compiled by communities in and around Hanover. Most of these cookbooks were published in the later half of the 20th century. Parrish-Penny observed that the compilation of community cookbooks became very popular in the ’80s and ’90s but virtually disappeared with the start of the internet in the 2000s.
The recipes in these cookbooks are not necessarily “the best recipes for a specific dish or a specific cuisine” but rather “recipes that are representative of upholding a community,” according to Parrish-Penny.
The third case encapsulates a national trend in the 20th century toward the aesthetic appearance of cookbooks. As visitors view this case, their eyes might be drawn to Ruth E. Adomeit’s miniature 1960 cookbook, The Little Cookie Book, or the red, Cupid-adorned cover of Pilaff Bey’s 1953 cookbook Venus in the Kitchen: Or Love’s Cookery Book.
Parrish-Penny hopes to include an interactive part of the exhibit by adding copies of some of the cookbooks’ recipes for visitors to take home.
Swan remarked that “Plate to Print” is “an excellent example of Kira’s unique blend of real-world pragmatism with deep intellectual inquiry.”
“Kira’s analysis is a master class on how historic texts can illuminate the present by highlighting the past and provide perspective on how to approach the future,” Swan said. “Honestly, it’s also a fun and interesting way to learn more about the cultural centrality of cooking.”
While thinking about the contemporary audience visiting the exhibit, Parrish-Penny also reflected on how communities share and discuss recipes on social media today.
“[Cookbooks] transformed into this media that we don’t even think of as — I don’t even really think of as something that would ever be included in archives but absolutely will and should be,” she said. “Your TikTok feed has ‘#FoodTok,’ the Instagram Reel holes that I go down show various ways to cook all sorts of things.”
“Food obviously still plays such an important role in our lives,” she added. “And [it] will always play an important role.”
