A Gracious Plenty: Recipes and Recollections from the American South (Paperback)

by John T. Edge (Author), Ellen Rolfes (Author) "Community cookbooks-those clunky, spiral-bound, gravy-spattered volumes-are as Southern as sweet tea..." (more)
Key Phrases: unused sauce, crawfish fat, salt teaspoon black pepper, New Orleans, North Carolina, Gracious Plenty (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
There is a calmness to this book, and it comes from an assured knowledge rising out of the kind of scholarship that sets aside popular mythology in favor of the ways things actually are and have been. No U.S. region suffers more from popular mythology, some of it benign, much of it mocking and cruel, than the South. Author-editor John T. Edge encourages the reader of A Gracious Plenty to taste the South for what it is and has been. The book has the backing of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. In his introduction, Center director Charles Reagan Wilson points to the Southern Thanksgiving of his father-in-law, a native Mississippian who happens to be Lebanese. Both deep-fried turkey and kibbe are served, with stuffed grape and cabbage leaves as well as oyster dressing and sweet potato casserole. The heritage, he writes, is strictly Southern.

The recipes are drawn from community cookbooks--"those clunky, spiral-bound, gravy-spattered volumes." While they get little respect, these volumes are an important part of the Southern kitchen and food tradition. The earliest ones date back to the Civil War and then as now were published to raise funds for a cause. Apparently, by the close of the 19th century, more than 2,000 community cookbooks were in print. Edge rightly points out that recipes gathered into a community cookbook are never authored by one, but by many. In effect, he encourages the reader to pull a seat up to the Southern table. Many of the voices heard in A Gracious Plenty come from material gathered by writers and journalists between 1935 and 1942 working for the Federal Writers Project.

The recipes are divided into sections that include appetizers, beverages, breads, salads and dressings, sides and vegetables, soups and stews, meats, poultry, fish and seafood, sauces, preserves, jellies and pickles, desserts, and a final section on menus. These are home recipes, church-basement recipes, proud recipes. They taste like reality made up of pain and hospitality and careless laughter. A Gracious Plenty is a wonderful book and an important addition to anyone's cookbook library. --Schuyler Ingle --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
Food writer Edge and Rolfes, a cookbook packager, present an introduction to Dixie food, from Gumbo Z'herbes, Smothered Chicken, Crawfish Jambalaya and Turnip Greens to an assortment of sweet desserts. More than 400 recipes have been chosen from dozens of community cookbooks (e.g., High Cotton Cookin', The Black Family Reunion Cookbook and True Grits), some dating back to the Civil War. These dishes, from real home cooks, are simple and dependable. The authors maintain that "the best cookbooks are storybooks," and theirs is liberally peppered with stories from Southern writers, artists and cooks. Novelist Reynolds Price muses on pimiento cheese ("It was the peanut butter of my childhood"), B.B. King extols the virtues of yams and Edna Lewis (The Taste of Country Cooking) gathers all kinds of bitter greens for eating and medicine. Vintage black-and-white photographs add charm, and a closing selection of menus advises cooks how to plan a New Orleans Jazz Brunch or a Texas Barbecue.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: HP Trade (September 3, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557883882
• ISBN-13: 978-1557883889
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #183,736 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Southern food is unmatched in taste and culture....., September 13, 2000

By	"missolemiss" (Oxford, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Gracious Plenty (Hardcover)

As a reformed "Yankee" and a student of the Univeristy of Mississippi I have had the great pleasure of living in the south for the last four years. The south is a culture of small towns and their dinner tables and southern food is literally a story of life told on the kitchen table. A story about the many cultures that were mixed together and the wonderful cream that rose to the top to create the wonderful recipes that exist today.

I am a good cook so says my husband and cook books for me are a passion. However, this book in particular reminds me each time I pick it up of four wonderful years lived in the gracious palm of the south and of the hearts of the many people I have gotten to know. As we move on (a military family) I can open this book and truly remember a place I have come to call home. There's a saying down here for Yankee's "I wasn't born in the south, but I got here as fast as I could."

This book is a wonderful gift to any graduate of a southern school or for any southern bride. But most of all for anyone who wants a taste of the south and a good story to read. Also, rest assured that Ole Miss would not blindly stamp their seal of approval on something that was not the finest example of southern culture.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A treasury of the best of old-time southern recipes, June 22, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: A Gracious Plenty (Hardcover)

This is a cookbook I turn to all the time. I get homesick for the South (where I grew up) whenever I look at these evocative black-and-white photos that reveal vistas into the Southern way of life -- the church supper, the front porch where someone sits shelling beans, the hot and steamy kitchen where dinner rolls sit rising. I also love reading the reminiscences in this book written by various Southerners. All the essays make my heart ache, but one especially took me back, to the long hot summer I spent in the poor black town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, in the midst of the civil rights struggles of the Freedom Riders. Most importantly, these recipes are real, culled from community cookbooks, and representative of the best of Southern cooking, from humble water-and-cornmeal cakes to the ethereal Forgotten Kisses served at the finest luncheons. Just the other evening, I made Aunt Effie's Custard Johnny Cake for the first time, having heard it described as one of the best recipes in the collection, and I have decided that this one recipe alone is worth the price of the book! Mmmmm-mmmmm. This book is a must-have for lovers of good Southern food.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars True Southern Hospitality!, March 25, 2001

By	Bob Older (Wilmington, DE United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: A Gracious Plenty (Hardcover)

This cookbook, A Gracious Plenty, was definitely all about true Southern recipes. Recipes for Souse (the South's original form of Scrapple), Hog's Head Cheese, Smothered Doves, Casserole of Possum, Boudin, and Cracklin's have some ingredients in them that I personally may not eat (like hog's heads, pig's skin, or just a mixture of water and pork fat to eat as a snack) but they are some sure Suthern favorites. Other recipes include: Spiced Pecans, Tomato Sandwiches, Sun Tea, Planter's Punch, Mint Julep, Hot-Water Cornbread, Sally Lunn Bread, Hush Puppies, Festive corn and Black-Eyed Pea Salad, Buttermilk-Garlic Dressing, Succotash, Corn Fritters, Fried Grits, Louisiana Seafood Gumbo, Southern Catfish Stew, Chicken-Fried Steak, Jambalaya, Pigs' Feet, Fried Chicken, Chicken and Dumplings, Oyster Po'boy Loaf, Fried Catfish, Watermelon Rind Pickles, Chow-Chow, Mississippi Mud Cake, Coca Cola Cake, Peach Pie, and Creole Pralines.

There are litterally hundreds of recipes sprawled out onto these pages with as many as four on a page with a few needing the page turned, which is my cardinal sin. Most of the recipes are easy to follow and easy to make with only a few needing ingredients that may not be readily available in your local markets. Some of the recipes are time consuming but have incredible ending results. I am sure this cookbook will look much better printed in color, as it is supposed to be, even with the many black & white photographs that are scattered throughout the pages. I am quite sure that most of the recipes will destroy my low-cholesterol and blood-pressure lowering meals that I am supposed to now be eating but my taste buds will be thanking me.