It’s interesting to ponder the ways in which different political impulses and movements have had an effect on recipes.
For instance, did the “Women’s Club Movement” and the Progressive Era result in cookbooks that would otherwise have not been produced, and recipes that may not have otherwise been documented? Or would community cookbooks have been an inevitability, produced by churches, causes, and maybe just “because,” whether women wanted to change the world or not?
There is no way to know of course. I only know that there are many cookbooks made by women’s clubs or guilds around the state and that they began with the Progressive era of the 1890s and continued up through at least the 1980s.
“Women’s Club Favorites,” made by the Women’s Club of Hagerstown in 1986 is one of my more recent cookbooks in this vein.