February 24, 2024 • 23 mins
Though her story was almost lost, this accomplished Black American cook and cookbook writer from the 1800s is teaching us new things about the cuisine and culture of her time. Anney and Lauren dig into the rediscovery of Malinda Russell and her recipes.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to Savor Production. iHeartRadio. I'm Annie Reese.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And unlaurn bogabaum, and today we have an episode for
you about Melinda Russell.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Yes, was there any reason this person was on your mind? Lord?
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Well, it is Black History Month here in the United States,
and I was looking for a relevant topic to that
and kind of going through some of these, you know,
like like like roundups of biographies of cool humans of
the past, and I had never heard of miss Melinda Russell,
and her story really caught me, and so I wanted
(00:45):
to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
I hadn't heard of her either, and it is a
really amazing, fascinating story. Yeah, and also you can find
a lot of the stuff we're talking about. Unfortunately, a
lot of things about her life have been lost, which
we'll discuss. But you can't find the cookbook online for
free that we're going to discuss. So there's stuff out there.
(01:11):
There's stuff out there.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Oh yeah, absolutely, mhmm.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
You can see our past biography episodes for.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
More, maybe our past cookbook episodes, and also episodes concerning
ingredients and techniques from the American South, which in which
themes that we're going to talk about have come up often.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yes, yes, all right, So I guess that brings us
to our question.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
I guess it does.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Melinda Russell, who was she?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Well? Melinda Russell was a black American who lived during
the eighteen hundreds. Was an accomplished cook and pastry chef,
and wrote a cookbook which, as far as we know,
is the first one published by a black woman in
the United States. Ever, her story was almost lost, and
it's extraordinary because she was this relatively average person during
(02:08):
her lifetime. You know, she never knew fame. She had
all kinds of odds stacked against her as a free
black woman in that time and place. But her very
existence and the book that she wrote are now helping
us change what we thought we knew or perhaps had
assumed about cooking and cuisine by black people, in particular
(02:30):
around the American South in general pre emancipation and during
the era of the Civil War. It was not just
poverty cooking. People have been saying this forever, but this
is definitive evidence. The culture was far more nuanced and
complicated than that. It's like the finding of this book
was like finding a new fossil that gives you hard
(02:53):
evidence about earlier life that was previously poorly understood and
kind of left a conjecture her life and her work
are just an absolute gift. Yeah. More about Wrestle herself
in the history section, but a bit about her.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Book here is so okay.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
She self published a domestic cookbook containing a careful selection
of useful receipts for the kitchen in eighteen sixty six.
It is a thirty nine page pamphlet really that assumes
the reader has a good handle on basic cookery and
equipment of the time. Some of the recipes do include instructions,
but many are more of like a list of amounts
(03:31):
of ingredients. It includes about two hundred and sixty five recipes.
She ran a pastry shop at one point, and indeed
a lot of her recipes are for these fancy like
Euro American desserts, lemon merang pie, cream puffs, trifles, Charlotte
Russ wine, gelatine, and all kinds of cookies, cakes, icings, custards,
puddings and pies. There are also lots of fancy preserves
(03:55):
like brandied peaches and a whole candied oranges in syrup.
Other recipe feature local produce like gooseberries, tomatoes, mulberries, okra
and quints. Yes, there is a recipe for tomato ketchup,
just in case you were wondering. The few savory dishes
are things that you would have for like a nice
dinner or tea at the time. Calf's head soup, frickasied catfish,
(04:17):
rare cooked spiced beef to be sliced thin and served cold.
A spiced onion custard nice and creamy. Yeah, a white
meat chicken salad with celery and mustard. There's also a
section in the back with basic recipes for things like
ice cream or ginger beer, plus non edibles like cologne
and some like home and or folk remedies for various
ailments like burns and toothaches. The colonne. By the way,
(04:39):
and I can't remember if I've mentioned this on the
show before, but I am a perfume nerd. I got
really into Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab a number of years ago.
And yes, I have too many perfumes. But okay, so
the cologne sounds really nice. It has rosemary, lemon, bergamont, lavender, cinnamon, clove,
and rose.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Yeah that does sound lovely right.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Anyway, we are extensibly a food show, ostensibly, well, what
about the nutrition and don't eat history.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Consume it for your brain.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Oh, there you go, there you go.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Yeah, we have one solitary number for you.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Oh we do. As far as we know, there is
a single copy of this cookbook remaining on this our
planet Earth.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Which is wild that is. And it's quite the story
how it was recovered, how this history was rediscovered. I
was not expecting it when I was doing this research.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah, yeah, I really fell in love with it. And Okay,
so we are going to get into that history and
a little bit about Melinda Russell's life, But first we
are going to get into a quick break forward from
our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Airbaks. Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you. So, as I mentioned, unfortunately,
a lot of Melinda Russell's story has been lost due
to a number of factors, and a lot of what
we do know is based on the very short bio
at the front of her cookbook that historians have pieced
together and or speculated on to make an educated guess.
(06:30):
In some instances, there are people looking into this and
we will talk about that. Yeah, But at the time
of when this cookbook was published, when Melinda Russell was alive,
a lot of record keeping, especially when it comes to
black people, was haphazard at best and just not done
or erased at worst. So we got to move with
(06:52):
what we have here, all right. But in this forward
in the cookbook, Russell says that she was born and
raised in eastern Tennessee. There's no date given, but it
was probably around eighteen twelve. Her mother's name was Karen,
who was born after Russell's grandmother had been freed from enslavement.
Her mother died when Russell was quite young. In her
(07:15):
late teens, Russell joined a group of folks intending to
go to Liberia.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Yeah. Liberia at the time was an American colony of
freed African Americans and afric Caribbeans, hoping to find more
complete personal freedom and opportunity right.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
But after one of the members of their party robbed Russell,
she was forced to abandon that plan and instead became
a Ladies companion and cook I even read nurse somewhere
in Lynchburg, Virginia. She went on to marry a man
named Anderson Vaughn, and they had a son together. Only
four years later, Vaughn died, leaving Russell to take care
(07:54):
of their child. While she was running a laundry at
the time, and I wanted to read this because she
such a voice.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Yeah, she included this in that same forward for this
cookbook she did.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
She did, and it was what she said was an
advertisement for her washhouse. Quote, Melinda Vaughan, fashionable Laundress, would
respectfully afford the ladies and gentlemen of Agwingdon that she
is prepared to wash and iron every description of clothing
in the neatest and most satisfactory manner. Every article washed
by her, she guarantees shall pass unscathed through the severest
(08:31):
ordeal of inspection, without the remotest danger of condemnation. That's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
It's so good, it is, oh gosh. A little bit later,
she took back her maiden name and also worked as
a cook for families around Tennessee, North Carolina, and Kentucky.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Right, And eventually she went on to run a boarding
house and then later a pastry shop in Tennessee. And yeah,
remember this was a time when many black people in
the southern US were enslaved and the civil rights of
black people were not recognized by law in the United States,
and she was a single mother running a business and
raising a child with the disability in this atmosphere. Yeah,
(09:16):
Over the course of six years, Russell managed to save
up some money through her pastry shop and made enough
to provide for her and her son. But in eighteen
sixty four she was robbed and threatened with violence and
death if she reported the robber. So she packed up
her son and her life and moved to Paw Paw, Michigan.
Though she hoped to return to Tennessee one day when
(09:37):
things were more peaceful in Tennessee. So this is kind
of where a lot of things get a little blurry
because we just have this thing that she wrote. But
after enough time had passed, Russell wanted to return back
to Tennessee. But by then was kind of quote getting
on a bit in years, so she needed a different
way to make money other than cooking, kind of that
(09:59):
physical health of cooking. So she thought of her years
of experience in that world of cooking, though, and of
how people enjoyed what she made and how they asked
after her recipes, and she got this idea to put
together a cookbook. So Russell self published a domestic cookbook
containing a careful selection of useful receipts for the kitchen
(10:21):
in Papa in eighteen sixty six, and part of the
reason she published it was, yes, this fundraising tool so
that she could get enough money to go back to Tennessee.
In the opening short history of the book, she gives yeah,
this like biography, but she also specifically points out sources
she learned from, including Mary Randolph's cookbook The Virginia Housewife,
(10:42):
but also a black cook named Fanny Stewart, and that
was a role that was often forgotten, unappreciated, or erased. Yeah,
so she she did something very unique there and making
sure to call that out. She also establishes her expertise,
writing that she had been in the business of cooking
for over twenty years and I loved that. She was like,
(11:05):
trust me, people want my recipes. And here's the quote
to underline that point from the opening. I know my
receipts to be good, as they always have given satisfaction.
I have been advised to have my receipts published, as
they are valuable and every family has use for them.
Being compelled to leave the South on account of my
(11:25):
union principles in the time of the rebellion and having
been robbed of all my hard earned wages which I
had saved, and as I am now advanced in my years,
with no other means of support than my own labor,
I have put out this book with the intention of
benefiting the public as well as myself. I love it,
but yeah, I couldn't find much around what happened after
(11:48):
she published the book. She does have another line that
I really liked her. She was like, I know, everybody
who knows me's going to want to buy it, who's
tasted my food basically is gonna want to buy it. Yeah,
but I couldn't find much about what happened after. But
as I said, others that are more experienced, and I
think it's also important to call them out. The people
(12:10):
who are doing the work of kind of uncovering these things. Yeah, yeah,
are digging into it because it's not just you.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
It's that Currently, as far as we could find out,
the information does not exist. It has been lost, but
people are working on it.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
People are working on it, and in fact, this cookbook
was almost lost a time as well. Soon after Russell
left Pau Paul, the town burned in a fire and
it eliminated almost any scrap of history of her time
there and up until the early two thousands, the eighteen
(12:48):
eighty one cookbook What Missus Fisher Knows About Old Southern
Cooking was believed to be the first cookbook by an
African American woman. But in the early two thousands, an
antique cookbook collector and then curator of American culinary history
at the William L. Clements Library at the University of
Michigan named jan Lagoni got her hands on Russell's work.
(13:11):
It was this whole.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Thing, yeah, like it was found by a bookseller at
the bottom of a box from the collection of one
Ellen Evans Brown, who was the chef and cookbook writer
who helped pioneer fresh California cuisine in the nineteen fifties
and collected a great number of culinary materials.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Yeah, and this discovery completely upended a lot of the
mainstream thought around black cuisine in the US and Southern
cuisine sometimes called soul food in this context as well.
It suggested that a more nuanced take on this history
was missing and was needed. Here's a quote from journalist
(13:55):
Tony Tipton Martin, who spent over a decade researching the
history of African American women cooks quote in isolation, Melinda's
book might appear to be an aberration, but it dispels
the notion of a universal African American food experience, which
is why the term soul food doesn't work for so
many of us. And just a note, tony tip to
(14:16):
Martin went on to write the Jemima Code two centuries
of African American cookbooks. So she's done a lot of
amazing works.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
And then the story of Longoni tracking down Russell is
really fascinating. She and her husband, who was a chemistry professor,
they had this whole Indiana Jones thing going on that
they were so determined to track down this story. They
dug through newspapers, census reports, genealogies, They went to cemeteries
(14:47):
and town halls all across the South, including on like
a wedding anniversary. Really it was a big thing for them.
Longoni published a facsimile of Russell's book in two thousand
and seven.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Yes, and copies of both that and the original are online,
but that original book now lives at Clement's Library, specifically
in the culinary Archive named for Longoni. It's thought to
be right the only existing copy. That culinary archive, by
the way, is based on Longoni's personal collection, which contained
(15:23):
some twenty five thousand items at the time of her
death in twenty twenty two, and it has some exhibits online.
So go check out the Genice Bluestein Longoni Culinary Archive.
It's pretty rad.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Definitely, definitely, And this discovery really inspired a lot of people.
It was really important to a lot of people. In
twenty twenty, Sharin Cherard published a book of poetry around
themes inspired by Russell's life and recipes called Grimoire, and
then in twenty twenty one a group of culinary historians
(15:59):
came together to form the Melinda Russell Recipe Testing Project,
with the goal of testing the recipes and making them
more accessible for our modern kitchens and understanding of recipes, because,
as you said, Lauren, a lot of them kind of
assume you know certain things.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Yeah, yeah, or that you have access to certain equipment,
or that you understand what their weird measures are talking about.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
One of my favorites was I think one of them
was like a one sentence recipe yeah, and it was like,
and it's been fun to read. I was just kind
of perusing through kind of the blog post people were
writing about recreating the recipes, and it was fun to
see them be like, one sentence recipe, what is this
(16:41):
that I figured it out? You know, I love it?
Yeahs As we said, you can find this cookbook for
free online and there has been a lot written about
it and a lot of a really amazing conversations about it.
So if you want to look any of that up,
you can find it. It is available.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yeah, absolutely, But that is a kind of unfortunately, all
that we really have to say about Melinda Russell for now.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
It is. However, we do have some listener mail for you, all.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
We do, and we are going to get into that
as soon as we get back from one more quick
break for a word from our sponsors, and we're back.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Thank you sponsor, Yes.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Thank you, And we're back with listeners.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
It's like finding an amazing manuscript and you're like, yeah, yeah,
I feel like it's.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Also just a little bit Scooby Doo, but yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Well Scooby do also has discovered many amazing things.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
True, It's true.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
So it's an interest section. Thered be Bad. Sheldon wrote,
this memory is from back in the sixties when I
was a teen, My grandmother, who was born in Ireland
in the early eighteen nineties, was living with us. She
had gone shopping at some specialty shop one day and
(18:19):
came back with a bottle of Lyle's Golden syrup. She
showed it to all of us and told us that
she used to always get it back home, but had
been unable to find it until that day. Since then,
there was always a bottle of it in our house.
You brought back memories of my long gone grandmother. Fix
In the picture below, you'll see that I have an
(18:39):
old jar that I've been using to hold my cinnamon
sugar mix for my cinnamon rolls. And while I'm talking
to you, it looks like the Saint Albert's Curage Festival
has been moved from summer to winter, and you've missed
this year's event. You should start planning for your road
trip next year. I'm still planning on bringing you some
(19:01):
Montreal bagels when you come up here. I mean, yeah,
and bagels, fair enough, fair enough?
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah, that's our bad for not keeping better track of
the curd festival.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Yeah what are we doing?
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Yeah, well, not eating kurds is the thing.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
That's that's our punishment. Yeah, yep, yepurs.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Oh but how wonderful.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yeah, that's I love that so much. And I love
I do that too, where I'll keep containers and use
them for other things. Oh yeah, but then you get
the memory of like where that was the container was from. Yeah, sure, yeah,
so I love that in that container as we talked
about in that episode for Lyle's Golden Syrup, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Yeah, yeah, and right, you know, and all of which
makes me feel better about my wild habit of just
saving containers that I possibly don't need to save, which
brings us to Christine, who wrote, I was so intrigued
after listening to your recent episode ontopatche. I had never
(20:12):
heard of such a thing and simply had to try it.
So I launched into my science experiment last Sunday. I
read a few recipes and ended up using brown sugar.
It turned out fine, but next time I'll take a
trip to the Mexican grocery store for the real deal. Pianzillo.
After four days living in a pot on my counter,
not to mention the interesting comments from my family about
my witches brew, I screened it and placed it into
(20:33):
the fancy swing top bottles I saved from the French
soda I bought at World Market. I just couldn't throw
them away. I have a problem with saving jars and bottles,
but that's another story. It was so good. I added
tequila and lime and it was like a fancy margarita
with an extra pop of funky on the finish. Thank
you for inspiring my fun activity and tasty new cocktail.
I have to admit I heard Lauren's voice in my
(20:55):
head saying, bacteria poop throughout the process. Love the show
and love the fun delivery on interesting topics from you
both every week. Oh and thank you most of all
for giving me the justification for saving the bottles. I
was able to deliver a satisfying See, I told you
I would use them for something.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
To my husband, you are quite welcome.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Anytime, anytime, but from one person with the problem to you,
I'm glad that we gave you a solution.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Oh me too, me too. And space is a premium
in my place. And oh yeah, I'm just like, well,
I can't get rid of any of these things, though, I'm.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Right it's going to be useful. Yes, my county doesn't
even do glass recycling.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
That yeah, also true, so true. Christine also sent pictures
and it looks delicious, your science experiment concoction cocktail. I'm
very I determined to do it, and I think I'm
you've inspired me, inspired me fabulous. I looked so good
(22:05):
and I'm so glad that it worked out and that
you got to a nice I told you so, a
moment out of it and a bacteria poop moment out
of it.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Yeah, and that's that's a bingo right there.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
I think I'm pretty sure it is. Well. Thank you
so much to both of these listeners for writing in.
If you would like to write to us, you can.
Our email is hello at saberpod dot com.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
We're also on social media. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at saber pod and we do hope to
hear from you. Savor is production of my Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super producers
Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening,
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
(22:52):
your way.
Hello, and welcome to Savor Production. iHeartRadio. I'm Annie Reese.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And unlaurn bogabaum, and today we have an episode for
you about Melinda Russell.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Yes, was there any reason this person was on your mind? Lord?
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Well, it is Black History Month here in the United States,
and I was looking for a relevant topic to that
and kind of going through some of these, you know,
like like like roundups of biographies of cool humans of
the past, and I had never heard of miss Melinda Russell,
and her story really caught me, and so I wanted
(00:45):
to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
I hadn't heard of her either, and it is a
really amazing, fascinating story. Yeah, and also you can find
a lot of the stuff we're talking about. Unfortunately, a
lot of things about her life have been lost, which
we'll discuss. But you can't find the cookbook online for
free that we're going to discuss. So there's stuff out there.
(01:11):
There's stuff out there.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Oh yeah, absolutely, mhmm.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
You can see our past biography episodes for.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
More, maybe our past cookbook episodes, and also episodes concerning
ingredients and techniques from the American South, which in which
themes that we're going to talk about have come up often.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yes, yes, all right, So I guess that brings us
to our question.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
I guess it does.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Melinda Russell, who was she?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Well? Melinda Russell was a black American who lived during
the eighteen hundreds. Was an accomplished cook and pastry chef,
and wrote a cookbook which, as far as we know,
is the first one published by a black woman in
the United States. Ever, her story was almost lost, and
it's extraordinary because she was this relatively average person during
(02:08):
her lifetime. You know, she never knew fame. She had
all kinds of odds stacked against her as a free
black woman in that time and place. But her very
existence and the book that she wrote are now helping
us change what we thought we knew or perhaps had
assumed about cooking and cuisine by black people, in particular
(02:30):
around the American South in general pre emancipation and during
the era of the Civil War. It was not just
poverty cooking. People have been saying this forever, but this
is definitive evidence. The culture was far more nuanced and
complicated than that. It's like the finding of this book
was like finding a new fossil that gives you hard
(02:53):
evidence about earlier life that was previously poorly understood and
kind of left a conjecture her life and her work
are just an absolute gift. Yeah. More about Wrestle herself
in the history section, but a bit about her.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Book here is so okay.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
She self published a domestic cookbook containing a careful selection
of useful receipts for the kitchen in eighteen sixty six.
It is a thirty nine page pamphlet really that assumes
the reader has a good handle on basic cookery and
equipment of the time. Some of the recipes do include instructions,
but many are more of like a list of amounts
(03:31):
of ingredients. It includes about two hundred and sixty five recipes.
She ran a pastry shop at one point, and indeed
a lot of her recipes are for these fancy like
Euro American desserts, lemon merang pie, cream puffs, trifles, Charlotte
Russ wine, gelatine, and all kinds of cookies, cakes, icings, custards,
puddings and pies. There are also lots of fancy preserves
(03:55):
like brandied peaches and a whole candied oranges in syrup.
Other recipe feature local produce like gooseberries, tomatoes, mulberries, okra
and quints. Yes, there is a recipe for tomato ketchup,
just in case you were wondering. The few savory dishes
are things that you would have for like a nice
dinner or tea at the time. Calf's head soup, frickasied catfish,
(04:17):
rare cooked spiced beef to be sliced thin and served cold.
A spiced onion custard nice and creamy. Yeah, a white
meat chicken salad with celery and mustard. There's also a
section in the back with basic recipes for things like
ice cream or ginger beer, plus non edibles like cologne
and some like home and or folk remedies for various
ailments like burns and toothaches. The colonne. By the way,
(04:39):
and I can't remember if I've mentioned this on the
show before, but I am a perfume nerd. I got
really into Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab a number of years ago.
And yes, I have too many perfumes. But okay, so
the cologne sounds really nice. It has rosemary, lemon, bergamont, lavender, cinnamon, clove,
and rose.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Yeah that does sound lovely right.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Anyway, we are extensibly a food show, ostensibly, well, what
about the nutrition and don't eat history.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Consume it for your brain.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Oh, there you go, there you go.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Yeah, we have one solitary number for you.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Oh we do. As far as we know, there is
a single copy of this cookbook remaining on this our
planet Earth.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Which is wild that is. And it's quite the story
how it was recovered, how this history was rediscovered. I
was not expecting it when I was doing this research.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah, yeah, I really fell in love with it. And Okay,
so we are going to get into that history and
a little bit about Melinda Russell's life, But first we
are going to get into a quick break forward from
our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Airbaks. Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you. So, as I mentioned, unfortunately,
a lot of Melinda Russell's story has been lost due
to a number of factors, and a lot of what
we do know is based on the very short bio
at the front of her cookbook that historians have pieced
together and or speculated on to make an educated guess.
(06:30):
In some instances, there are people looking into this and
we will talk about that. Yeah, But at the time
of when this cookbook was published, when Melinda Russell was alive,
a lot of record keeping, especially when it comes to
black people, was haphazard at best and just not done
or erased at worst. So we got to move with
(06:52):
what we have here, all right. But in this forward
in the cookbook, Russell says that she was born and
raised in eastern Tennessee. There's no date given, but it
was probably around eighteen twelve. Her mother's name was Karen,
who was born after Russell's grandmother had been freed from enslavement.
Her mother died when Russell was quite young. In her
(07:15):
late teens, Russell joined a group of folks intending to
go to Liberia.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Yeah. Liberia at the time was an American colony of
freed African Americans and afric Caribbeans, hoping to find more
complete personal freedom and opportunity right.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
But after one of the members of their party robbed Russell,
she was forced to abandon that plan and instead became
a Ladies companion and cook I even read nurse somewhere
in Lynchburg, Virginia. She went on to marry a man
named Anderson Vaughn, and they had a son together. Only
four years later, Vaughn died, leaving Russell to take care
(07:54):
of their child. While she was running a laundry at
the time, and I wanted to read this because she
such a voice.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Yeah, she included this in that same forward for this
cookbook she did.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
She did, and it was what she said was an
advertisement for her washhouse. Quote, Melinda Vaughan, fashionable Laundress, would
respectfully afford the ladies and gentlemen of Agwingdon that she
is prepared to wash and iron every description of clothing
in the neatest and most satisfactory manner. Every article washed
by her, she guarantees shall pass unscathed through the severest
(08:31):
ordeal of inspection, without the remotest danger of condemnation. That's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
It's so good, it is, oh gosh. A little bit later,
she took back her maiden name and also worked as
a cook for families around Tennessee, North Carolina, and Kentucky.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Right, And eventually she went on to run a boarding
house and then later a pastry shop in Tennessee. And yeah,
remember this was a time when many black people in
the southern US were enslaved and the civil rights of
black people were not recognized by law in the United States,
and she was a single mother running a business and
raising a child with the disability in this atmosphere. Yeah,
(09:16):
Over the course of six years, Russell managed to save
up some money through her pastry shop and made enough
to provide for her and her son. But in eighteen
sixty four she was robbed and threatened with violence and
death if she reported the robber. So she packed up
her son and her life and moved to Paw Paw, Michigan.
Though she hoped to return to Tennessee one day when
(09:37):
things were more peaceful in Tennessee. So this is kind
of where a lot of things get a little blurry
because we just have this thing that she wrote. But
after enough time had passed, Russell wanted to return back
to Tennessee. But by then was kind of quote getting
on a bit in years, so she needed a different
way to make money other than cooking, kind of that
(09:59):
physical health of cooking. So she thought of her years
of experience in that world of cooking, though, and of
how people enjoyed what she made and how they asked
after her recipes, and she got this idea to put
together a cookbook. So Russell self published a domestic cookbook
containing a careful selection of useful receipts for the kitchen
(10:21):
in Papa in eighteen sixty six, and part of the
reason she published it was, yes, this fundraising tool so
that she could get enough money to go back to Tennessee.
In the opening short history of the book, she gives yeah,
this like biography, but she also specifically points out sources
she learned from, including Mary Randolph's cookbook The Virginia Housewife,
(10:42):
but also a black cook named Fanny Stewart, and that
was a role that was often forgotten, unappreciated, or erased. Yeah,
so she she did something very unique there and making
sure to call that out. She also establishes her expertise,
writing that she had been in the business of cooking
for over twenty years and I loved that. She was like,
(11:05):
trust me, people want my recipes. And here's the quote
to underline that point from the opening. I know my
receipts to be good, as they always have given satisfaction.
I have been advised to have my receipts published, as
they are valuable and every family has use for them.
Being compelled to leave the South on account of my
(11:25):
union principles in the time of the rebellion and having
been robbed of all my hard earned wages which I
had saved, and as I am now advanced in my years,
with no other means of support than my own labor,
I have put out this book with the intention of
benefiting the public as well as myself. I love it,
but yeah, I couldn't find much around what happened after
(11:48):
she published the book. She does have another line that
I really liked her. She was like, I know, everybody
who knows me's going to want to buy it, who's
tasted my food basically is gonna want to buy it. Yeah,
but I couldn't find much about what happened after. But
as I said, others that are more experienced, and I
think it's also important to call them out. The people
(12:10):
who are doing the work of kind of uncovering these things. Yeah, yeah,
are digging into it because it's not just you.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
It's that Currently, as far as we could find out,
the information does not exist. It has been lost, but
people are working on it.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
People are working on it, and in fact, this cookbook
was almost lost a time as well. Soon after Russell
left Pau Paul, the town burned in a fire and
it eliminated almost any scrap of history of her time
there and up until the early two thousands, the eighteen
(12:48):
eighty one cookbook What Missus Fisher Knows About Old Southern
Cooking was believed to be the first cookbook by an
African American woman. But in the early two thousands, an
antique cookbook collector and then curator of American culinary history
at the William L. Clements Library at the University of
Michigan named jan Lagoni got her hands on Russell's work.
(13:11):
It was this whole.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Thing, yeah, like it was found by a bookseller at
the bottom of a box from the collection of one
Ellen Evans Brown, who was the chef and cookbook writer
who helped pioneer fresh California cuisine in the nineteen fifties
and collected a great number of culinary materials.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Yeah, and this discovery completely upended a lot of the
mainstream thought around black cuisine in the US and Southern
cuisine sometimes called soul food in this context as well.
It suggested that a more nuanced take on this history
was missing and was needed. Here's a quote from journalist
(13:55):
Tony Tipton Martin, who spent over a decade researching the
history of African American women cooks quote in isolation, Melinda's
book might appear to be an aberration, but it dispels
the notion of a universal African American food experience, which
is why the term soul food doesn't work for so
many of us. And just a note, tony tip to
(14:16):
Martin went on to write the Jemima Code two centuries
of African American cookbooks. So she's done a lot of
amazing works.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
And then the story of Longoni tracking down Russell is
really fascinating. She and her husband, who was a chemistry professor,
they had this whole Indiana Jones thing going on that
they were so determined to track down this story. They
dug through newspapers, census reports, genealogies, They went to cemeteries
(14:47):
and town halls all across the South, including on like
a wedding anniversary. Really it was a big thing for them.
Longoni published a facsimile of Russell's book in two thousand
and seven.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Yes, and copies of both that and the original are online,
but that original book now lives at Clement's Library, specifically
in the culinary Archive named for Longoni. It's thought to
be right the only existing copy. That culinary archive, by
the way, is based on Longoni's personal collection, which contained
(15:23):
some twenty five thousand items at the time of her
death in twenty twenty two, and it has some exhibits online.
So go check out the Genice Bluestein Longoni Culinary Archive.
It's pretty rad.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Definitely, definitely, And this discovery really inspired a lot of people.
It was really important to a lot of people. In
twenty twenty, Sharin Cherard published a book of poetry around
themes inspired by Russell's life and recipes called Grimoire, and
then in twenty twenty one a group of culinary historians
(15:59):
came together to form the Melinda Russell Recipe Testing Project,
with the goal of testing the recipes and making them
more accessible for our modern kitchens and understanding of recipes, because,
as you said, Lauren, a lot of them kind of
assume you know certain things.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Yeah, yeah, or that you have access to certain equipment,
or that you understand what their weird measures are talking about.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
One of my favorites was I think one of them
was like a one sentence recipe yeah, and it was like,
and it's been fun to read. I was just kind
of perusing through kind of the blog post people were
writing about recreating the recipes, and it was fun to
see them be like, one sentence recipe, what is this
(16:41):
that I figured it out? You know, I love it?
Yeahs As we said, you can find this cookbook for
free online and there has been a lot written about
it and a lot of a really amazing conversations about it.
So if you want to look any of that up,
you can find it. It is available.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yeah, absolutely, But that is a kind of unfortunately, all
that we really have to say about Melinda Russell for now.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
It is. However, we do have some listener mail for you, all.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
We do, and we are going to get into that
as soon as we get back from one more quick
break for a word from our sponsors, and we're back.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Thank you sponsor, Yes.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Thank you, And we're back with listeners.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
It's like finding an amazing manuscript and you're like, yeah, yeah,
I feel like it's.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Also just a little bit Scooby Doo, but yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Well Scooby do also has discovered many amazing things.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
True, It's true.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
So it's an interest section. Thered be Bad. Sheldon wrote,
this memory is from back in the sixties when I
was a teen, My grandmother, who was born in Ireland
in the early eighteen nineties, was living with us. She
had gone shopping at some specialty shop one day and
(18:19):
came back with a bottle of Lyle's Golden syrup. She
showed it to all of us and told us that
she used to always get it back home, but had
been unable to find it until that day. Since then,
there was always a bottle of it in our house.
You brought back memories of my long gone grandmother. Fix
In the picture below, you'll see that I have an
(18:39):
old jar that I've been using to hold my cinnamon
sugar mix for my cinnamon rolls. And while I'm talking
to you, it looks like the Saint Albert's Curage Festival
has been moved from summer to winter, and you've missed
this year's event. You should start planning for your road
trip next year. I'm still planning on bringing you some
(19:01):
Montreal bagels when you come up here. I mean, yeah,
and bagels, fair enough, fair enough?
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah, that's our bad for not keeping better track of
the curd festival.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Yeah what are we doing?
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Yeah, well, not eating kurds is the thing.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
That's that's our punishment. Yeah, yep, yepurs.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Oh but how wonderful.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yeah, that's I love that so much. And I love
I do that too, where I'll keep containers and use
them for other things. Oh yeah, but then you get
the memory of like where that was the container was from. Yeah, sure, yeah,
so I love that in that container as we talked
about in that episode for Lyle's Golden Syrup, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Yeah, yeah, and right, you know, and all of which
makes me feel better about my wild habit of just
saving containers that I possibly don't need to save, which
brings us to Christine, who wrote, I was so intrigued
after listening to your recent episode ontopatche. I had never
(20:12):
heard of such a thing and simply had to try it.
So I launched into my science experiment last Sunday. I
read a few recipes and ended up using brown sugar.
It turned out fine, but next time I'll take a
trip to the Mexican grocery store for the real deal. Pianzillo.
After four days living in a pot on my counter,
not to mention the interesting comments from my family about
my witches brew, I screened it and placed it into
(20:33):
the fancy swing top bottles I saved from the French
soda I bought at World Market. I just couldn't throw
them away. I have a problem with saving jars and bottles,
but that's another story. It was so good. I added
tequila and lime and it was like a fancy margarita
with an extra pop of funky on the finish. Thank
you for inspiring my fun activity and tasty new cocktail.
I have to admit I heard Lauren's voice in my
(20:55):
head saying, bacteria poop throughout the process. Love the show
and love the fun delivery on interesting topics from you
both every week. Oh and thank you most of all
for giving me the justification for saving the bottles. I
was able to deliver a satisfying See, I told you
I would use them for something.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
To my husband, you are quite welcome.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Anytime, anytime, but from one person with the problem to you,
I'm glad that we gave you a solution.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Oh me too, me too. And space is a premium
in my place. And oh yeah, I'm just like, well,
I can't get rid of any of these things, though, I'm.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Right it's going to be useful. Yes, my county doesn't
even do glass recycling.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
That yeah, also true, so true. Christine also sent pictures
and it looks delicious, your science experiment concoction cocktail. I'm
very I determined to do it, and I think I'm
you've inspired me, inspired me fabulous. I looked so good
(22:05):
and I'm so glad that it worked out and that
you got to a nice I told you so, a
moment out of it and a bacteria poop moment out
of it.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Yeah, and that's that's a bingo right there.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
I think I'm pretty sure it is. Well. Thank you
so much to both of these listeners for writing in.
If you would like to write to us, you can.
Our email is hello at saberpod dot com.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
We're also on social media. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at saber pod and we do hope to
hear from you. Savor is production of my Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super producers
Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening,
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
(22:52):
your way.
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Dylan Fagan
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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