Lucie Jenkins Johnson culinary ephemera collection

The Lucie Jenkins Johnson culinary ephemera collection contains recipe booklets, periodicals, pamphlets, books, and recipe cards related to twentieth-century American foodways. The collection is a rich source of materials from corporations, trade associations, and government agencies that highlight contemporary ideas about advertising, nutrition, and household technology.

Series I. Industry recipe booklets, consists of materials created by food corporations, industry trade associations, and supermarkets to promote the purchase of various foodstuffs and beverages. Many of these booklets are advertising materials that were included with product purchases or sent to customers by request. Most recipes stressed ease and speed of preparation, economy, nutritional content, and purity in the promotion of specific products. Several booklets used celebrity and expert endorsements to entice customers. In addition to Betty Crocker, a fictional persona used by General Mills to dispense helpful household hints, companies also employed female home economists to test recipes and give advice to consumers, including Martha Lee Anderson and Patricia Collier. A few items in this series relate to wartime rationing and methods for stretching food and household budgets.

Series II. Regional foodways, comprises two publications promoting Southern and Creole recipes. While Paula Deen’s booklet on Southern recipes focuses almost exclusively on showcasing Deen’s other publications, the pamphlet on Creole Cuisine was by published the New Orleans Public Service, Inc. to promote regional foodways and advertise local Home Service classes for housewives.

Series III. Series and subscriptions, contains periodical publications promoting recipes and medicinal preparations as well as collections of recipe cards sent to consumers in installments. Materials from Good Housekeeping, The Boston Cooking School, and the Culinary Arts Institute of Chicago provide recipes, advice on domestic economy, and ideas for specific menus with few references to brand-name items. Sloan’s Magazine contains short stories and selections of poetry with advertisements for Sloan’s Liniment and Veterinary Recipes interspersed throughout.

Series IV. Didactic literature, consists of materials from government agencies, the food industry, and other individuals and organizations focused on providing consumers with expert advice on household matters. The majority of these items focus on cooking and nutrition, although some relate to household management more broadly. This series contains materials from the United States Department of Agriculture and its extension schools, industry trade associations, and organizations promoting human health, including Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and the American Heart Association.

Series V. Domestic economy, consists primarily of materials created by various corporations to instruct consumers on how to use household appliances and cookware, take care of household objects, and entertain in the home. This series highlights the explosion of new technologies meant to ease household labor in the mid-to-late twentieth century, including electric ranges, blenders, and bread machines. This series also includes materials created by Wilma Jenkins, sister-in-law of Lucie Jenkins Johnson, in her role as home economist for the Nolin Rural Electric Cooperative Corporation of Elizabethtown, Kentucky.