Aunt Priscilla
Aunt Priscilla was a pseudonym for the columnist Eleanor Purcell of The Baltimore Sun. Purcell used the image of the Mammy archetype to create a cooking column called Aunt Priscilla's Recipes which was purported to be written by an African American woman. The daily column was written in an exaggerated dialect.
About[edit]
Aunt Priscilla purportedly was a daily food columnist for The Baltimore Sun and her column ran from the early 1920s through the 1940s.[1][2] The columns were written as answers to culinary requests from readers of the newspaper and described how to cook traditional Southern recipes.[3][4] The directions for the recipes were written with "inexperienced cooks or brides in mind," according to The Baltimore Sun.[2]
Aunt Priscilla's columns were written in a dialect similar to Uncle Remus, according to writer, Alice Furlaud.[5] Lisa Hix described the dialect as an "exaggerated slave dialect."[3] Each publication included an illustration of a woman that could be considered "Jemima-like," according to Toni Tipton-Martin.[4] In a 1951 book called The Amiable Baltimoreans, the author, Francis F. Beirne, refers to Aunt Priscilla as if she was a real person.[6]
In fact, the column was written by Eleanor Purcell, who was white.[7][5] Purcell's work, according to Tipton-Martin, "was a form of minstrelsy," but "it broke with the long tradition of simply taking and publishing African American recipes without giving black cooks credit."[3] Purcell started working at The Baltimore Sun in 1916 and Aunt Priscilla's Recipes was her first feature for the paper.[2]
In 1929, a compilation of recipes mostly featuring holiday themes was published. The book was called Aunt Priscilla in the Kitchen: A Collection of Wintertime Recipes.[5] The column and the book both "are full of nostalgia for the old slave-owning south," said Furlaud.[5] The Baltimore Sun wrote that the cookbook was "well received."[2]
See also[edit]
Further reading[edit]
- Tipton-Martin, Toni (2015). The Jemima Code : Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks. Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN 9780292745483. OCLC 890377551.
References[edit]
- ^ Morago, Greg (19 October 2015). "Book explores early contributions of largely forgotten black cooks". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved 2017-12-13.
- ^ a b c d "Miss Purcell Dies at 83". The Baltimore Sun. 1963-04-21. p. 33. Retrieved 2017-12-13 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ a b c Hix, Lisa (22 January 2016). "Out of the Shadow of Aunt Jemima: The Real Black Chefs Who Taught Americans to Cook". Collectors Weekly. Retrieved 2017-12-12.
- ^ a b Tipton-Martin, Toni (28 April 2010). "Aunt Priscilla: Newspaper Culinary Columnist?". The Jemima Code. Retrieved 2017-12-12.
- ^ a b c d "Christmas Delights In Aunt Priscilla's Cookbook". NPR.org. 25 December 2008. Retrieved 2017-12-12.
- ^ Beirne, Francis F. (1951). The Amiable Baltimoreans. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 343. ISBN 9780801825132.
- ^ Wallach, Jennifer Jensen (2013). How America Eats: A Social History of U.S. Food and Culture. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 186. ISBN 9781442208742.
aunt priscilla recipes.
External links[edit]
- Correct Cookery (July 22, 1921)
- Sliced Cucumber Pickle (August 19, 1936)
- Shrimp Creole (December 7, 1943)
- Clippings - Aunt Priscilla's Recipes