The Country Kitchen [Paperback]

Della T. Lutes (Author), Lawrence R. Dawson (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1992

First published in 1936, Della Lutes's semi-autobiographical tale was widely acclaimed. Readers today will delight in her stories of life in the late nineteenth-century rural Michigan, complete descriptions of authentic country folks, reflections on family and community events, and especially, details of sharing meals together that recapture expressions of warmth and love and fond childhood memories. The book includes an index to recipes hidden within the humorous narrative.

Product Details

• Paperback: 269 pages
• Publisher: Wayne State University Press (January 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 081432438X
• ISBN-13: 978-0814324387
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #453,114 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Michigan's answer to MFK Fisher, January 7, 2001

By 

Bill Adler (New York, New York USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Country Kitchen (Paperback)

Mildly intrigued by the title of this book, I bought a used copy...a flea market in Lunenberg, Mass. this past fall. It turned out to be a real gem. Superbly well-written, it weaves together accounts of the author's family life in rural Michigan at the turn of the Twentieth Century with recipes of the food the family ate. The effect is very much along the lines of MFK Fisher's books about her life in France. But unlike Mrs. Fisher, Ms. Lutes is no self-conscious bohemian. Very much a woman of her time and place, she is nonetheless independent, intelligent, and very funny. That is, there is nothing genteel and Victorian about her, and nothing pretentious. She is modern, one of us. Who was Della T. Lutes? Hard to tell at this late date. My 1965 edition of "The Reader's Encyclopedia" has no entry on her. Amazon.com has only this title for sale. But she must have had a considerable following in her day. My copy of "The Country Kitchen," printed in 1948, was apparently the 22nd printing of a book originally published in 1936. The flyleaf lists four other titles by her. I gave "The Country Kitchen" to my wife, a chef, for Christmas. She has yet to stop raving about it. More than a cook book, a culinary history or a social history, "The Country Kitchen" qualifies as capital-L Literature.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Little house on the Prarie in Michigan, March 29, 2004

By 

E. A. Lovitt "starmoth" (Gladwin, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: The Country Kitchen (Hardcover)

This is quite an extraordinary book: a combination of "Little House on the Prairie" and one of my grandmother's old cookbooks. It was pressed on me by a friend whose reading tastes I don't normally share. I started reading "The Country Kitchen" to be polite, and ended up reading straight through to the end. Even though I wasn't even born until well after this book had gone through twenty-three editions, it had the power to evoke memories of my own childhood--at least the stories my grandfather used to tell me about his life on the farm.

Della Lutes was born in 1872 and lived on a farm near Jackson, Michigan until she was sixteen, when she left home to teach school. She eventually became the editor of "American Motherhood," "Today's Housewife," and in 1923 the "Modern Priscilla" magazine. When the publishing firm she worked for went bankrupt during the Great Depression, Della became a freelance writer and produced "The Country Kitchen," which started out as a series of articles in "The Atlantic Monthly." Her book was named "The Most Original Book" of 1936 by the American Booksellers Association and was described by Christopher Morley as a 'gastronomical autobiography.'

I don't know whether I'll ever try the recipe for "salt-risin' bread" or buy a quarter of beef to be "nicely ripened by hanging a couple of weeks or so in the woodshed," but I'll long remember the story of how Della's father entertained the Ladies' Church Aid Society by turning a baby skunk loose during their annual dinner. And then there's the story of Little Runt, who was fated to be the Thanksgiving pig, and Old Wart, the garden toad. Della's story wheels you through the complete cycle of seasons with all of the sights and smells of rural Michigan (you might not want to know what some folks used for home insulation, come late Autumn).

This author deserves a place on your shelf right next to Laura Ingalls Wilder. She has saturated this book with the tastes and smells of a late nineteenth-century rural kitchen, bringing back recollections I never knew I had. Maybe it's got something to do with ancestral remembrance, since nearly all of our folks were rural up until the early decades of the last century.

All I can urge you to do is read it and remember.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Michigan's Laura Ingalls Wilder, December 14, 2008

By 

E. A. Lovitt "starmoth" (Gladwin, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This is quite an extraordinary book: a combination of "Little House on the Prairie" and one of my grandmother's old cookbooks. It was pressed on me by a friend whose reading tastes I don't normally share. I started reading "The Country Kitchen" to be polite, and ended up reading straight through to the end. Even though I wasn't even born until well after this book had gone through twenty-three editions, it had the power to evoke memories of my own childhood--at least the stories my grandfather used to tell me about his life on the farm.

Della Lutes was born in 1872 and lived on a farm near Jackson, Michigan until she was sixteen, when she left home to teach school. She eventually became the editor of "American Motherhood," "Today's Housewife," and in 1923 the "Modern Priscilla" magazine. When the publishing firm she worked for went bankrupt during the Great Depression, Della became a freelance writer and produced "The Country Kitchen," which started out as a series of articles in "The Atlantic Monthly." Her book was named "The Most Original Book" of 1936 by the American Booksellers Association and was described by Christopher Morley as a 'gastronomical autobiography.'

I don't know whether I'll ever try the recipe for "salt-risin' bread" or buy a quarter of beef to be "nicely ripened by hanging a couple of weeks or so in the woodshed," but I'll long remember the story of how Della's father entertained the Ladies' Church Aid Society by turning a baby skunk loose during their annual dinner. And then there's the story of Little Runt, who was fated to be the Thanksgiving pig, and Old Wart, the garden toad. Della's story wheels you through the complete cycle of seasons with all of the sights and smells of rural Michigan (you might not want to know what some folks used for home insulation, come late Autumn).

This author deserves a place on your shelf right next to Laura Ingalls Wilder. She has saturated this book with the tastes and smells of a late nineteenth-century rural kitchen, bringing back recollections I never knew I had. Maybe it's got something to do with ancestral remembrance, since nearly all of our folks were rural up until the early decades of the last century.

All I can urge you to do is read it and remember.