THE SETTLEMENT COOK BOOK
"…her friend Annette gave her this 623-page volume….”
It was Betty Crocker’s Cook Book for Boys and Girls, with its Easter Hat Cake, that jumpstarted my love of cookbooks. Since then I’ve had many favorites: Craig Claiborne’s New York Times Cook Book, the Silver Palates (hello, Chicken Marbella), Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessas, bestsellers by Mark Bittman and Yotam Ottolenghi, and the community cookbook from Temple Beth El in Fargo, North Dakota, my hometown (paging through its recipes is like crashing a coffee party my mom is hosting for her girlfriends).
But were I forced to live out the rest of my days with only one cookbook, it would be The Settlement Cook Book, edition No. 23 from 1940, with its tagline, The way to a man’s heart. When my mother married in 1941, her friend Annette gave her this 623-page volume, inscribed, “You’ve won his heart, but here’s a small remembrance to help you keep his heart happy and your stomach filled.”
The Settlement Cook Book, with 40 editions and more than two million copies sold, has a storied history. First published in 1901, 30 years before The Joy of Cooking, it evolved from a pamphlet written by Lizzie Black Kander of Milwaukee to teach immigrant women how to cook and run a house. For Jewish homemakers in the first half of the twentieth century, Settlement was Holy Writ; most of them had never lived anywhere but with their parents and needed the book’s no-nonsense advice. My grandmother likely had a copy as well, since she came to Minneapolis from Russia in 1888 at age 2, married in 1911, and ran a large home in St. Paul.
Settlement’s recipes range from traditional (“Gefullte” fish, matzo balls, blintzes) to New Testament-assimilated (pork, shellfish, Chestnut Souffle) to possibly revolting (Liver Juice, Mock Marshmallows, Cheap Cake). The advice starts basic (accurate measurement is essential to good cooking) and climbs to Downton Abbey-esque (finger bowls may be brought in before any course).
Maybe I love this cookbook because—finger bowls notwithstanding—it reminds me of McCall’s, where I used to be the editor. Or perhaps it’s because when I researched the life of the gossip columnist Sheilah Graham to portray her in a novel, I discovered that she once cooked a Thanksgiving dinner from Settlement recipes for her lover, F. Scott Fitzgerald. But most likely I adore Settlement because I can imagine my late mother and grandmother paging through it just as I do, smiling and laughing as they wonder what on earth a Himmel Torte is.
—Sally Koslow
Sally Koslow is the author of six novels, most recently The Real Mrs. Tobias. Previously she was a longtime magazine editor and was editor-in-chief of McCall’s.