Former resident of Marietta Ella Ruth Tennent wrote about housekeeping for several periodicals and eventually her own subscription-based publication in the 1800s.
In the posthumously published “House-Keeping in the Sunny South,” Tennent offers nearly 800 food recipes, over 70 formulas for household compounds or medicines and eight essays on managing various rooms of the house. More than just a cookbook, this 1885 publication illuminates home life in Marietta and greater Georgia.
The small details of this volume tell a larger story. The preface states that the recipes are inexpensive to “meet the pressure of the times,” hinting toward the South’s ongoing recovery from an economic depression.
Yet the cookbook also reveals a changing South, peppered with recipes from hotels and restaurants, claims from contributors across the country, and calls for newly available commercial ingredients as well as exotic ones that demanded global shipping networks. The presence of chilled dishes between these covers also reveals the prevalence of affordable year-round kitchen ice.
However, this remains a culinary guide from a time and place poised at the cusp of transition. For example, it includes instructions for extracting the “jelly” from a calf’s foot alongside gelatin recipes dependent on store-bought thickener. While “House-Keeping in the Sunny South” was intended for Georgia’s rapidly changing kitchens, there is much for modern audiences to learn (and taste) from these pages.
