In 1866, Malinda Russell self-published
A Domestic Cookbook: Containing a Careful Selection of Useful Receipts for the Kitchen. The book holds the distinction of being the first known, cookbook published by an African American, and the first book to offer culinary advice by an African-American woman (
The House Servant’s Directory by Robert Roberts and
Never Let People Be Kept Waiting, a hotel management textbook by Tunis G. Campbell, precede it). But it’s remarkable for other reasons, too. Russell published it as a free woman living in Paw Paw, Michigan, as a fundraising effort to return to Tennessee, where she was born and raised. As Toni Tipton-Martin describes in her 2015 book
Traditional Southern New Yearâs Day Meal
The story told throughout the South is that the tradition of eating black-eyed peas on New Yearâs Day for good luck dates back to Shermanâs March to the Sea in the fall of 1864, when the Yankees laid waste to the Georgia countryside, stealing, killing, or burning everything in their wide path. Survivors faced starvation, until they realized Shermanâs men had left silos full of black-eyed peas, thinking it was food fit only for livestock, as was the case in the North at that time. And since there was no more livestock, there was no use for the peas, so the Yankees left the beans alone, and the South was saved from starvation. Hence the good luck. Shermanâs March was between November 15 until December 21, 1864. (The relationship to New Yearâs Day is fuzzy.)