Author(s): Rufus Estes
Publisher: Dover Publications
Publication Date: 2004-11-23
Pages: 160
Review: This is more than a cookbook (because most recipes you can’t recreate), it is a historical account of life as a slave cook. This is a good book to add to your collection if you are into collecting cookbooks or African American collectibles. There is a very brief introduction by the author of his life. It doesn’t go into a lot of detail of his experiences as a chef but names a few places where he worked. Some of the recipes may be familiar to the seniors out there. I remember my grandmother preparing dishes that were similar in nature to some of the recipes listed.
Obviously, this isn’t a cookbook like the ones of our generation. The recipes are very brief, don’t always list proportions, and are skimpy in preparation detail. If you purchase this and decide you want to try something, make sure you read the recipe over a few times to ensure that it flows and will work. For example, the fried chicken recipe instructs you to steep the chicken but there isn’t enough liquid mentioned in the recipe for that, and the instructions on cooking the marinade are vague as they only specify that the liquid is heated. Since the marinade or steeping liquid includes carrots and turnips (yes, really) you have to assume that either water or broth was used and the mixture cooked until at least those vegetable were softened.
I suppose the recipes are in the tradition of the cooking like Grandma used to do, a pinch of this or a spoonful of that with most of the detail being committed to memory!
The title says that this is the first cookbook by an African American Chef. However, there is another book (available at Amazon), “What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking” that was published in 1881.
Dover Publications has reprinted Rufus Estes’ Good Things to Eat: The First Cookbook by an African-American Chef, the first cookbook by an Afro-American chef, returning this time-lost 1911 culinary classic to print. It’s refreshing to read a title from the past which doesn’t skimp on the lard or the fats, and intriguing to read about Estes’ Southern childhood and early years as a railway attendant, while the easy recipes for Baked Milk (an early form of custard), or Parsnip Fritters.
Price: $9.95 Buy This Book