Kenneth Spencer Research Library

This is the first in a short series of posts highlighting students’ projects from Laura Mielke’s Spring 2025 class, “Archives in Scholarship” (ENGL 776). This week’s post was written by Joohye Oh, who graduated from KU in 2025 with a B.A. in English and Spanish. Her research interests include foodways and literacy.

Cookbooks – especially historic ones – are fascinating texts. Unlike 21st-century cookbooks that feature pictures of recipes, touching or interesting narrative asides, and use of less commonly found ingredients, older American cookbooks prioritize presenting readers and users with a no-frills approach to cooking. These cookbooks tend to be text-heavy and use ingredients more likely found in a pantry than a gourmet grocer. A wonderful example of an intriguing historical cookbook is the Fin-de-Siècle Cook Book, published in 1894, which showcases a slice of late 19th-century American foodways and the culinary literacy of the organized and ambitious women of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Parsons, Kansas. (“Fin de siècle” is a French term meaning “end of century.”)

         

Left: The protective red board cover for the Fin-de-Siècle Cook Book, which is a library-created pamphlet binding. Right: The cookbook’s original cover, slightly deteriorating, with the full title. Call Number: RH B2788. Click images to enlarge.

The Fin-de-Siècle Cook Book consists of two sections. First, there are 58 printed pages that include tipped-in clippings from magazines. Second, in the back, there are 11 pages of faintly lined paper that Whitney Baker, Head of Conservation Services at KU Libraries, believes were bound with the original publication and printed section. Someone, presumably a woman, filled with the blank lined pages with handwritten recipes that she selected and compiled. Instead of being completely different from the printed section, I see the handwritten section as extending the themes of women’s authorship and community while offering contemporary researchers a closer look at earlier American foodways in relation to the genre of the cookbook and literacy practices.

Women’s authorship is especially central to this object. Writing this cookbook arguably opened up new avenues for authorship and empowerment for the Parsons women, like the way literary clubs did for middle-class Black women in the 1890s, as African American literature and literary studies scholar Elizabeth McHenry shows (120). Additionally, the place of authorship for both groups reflects the importance of a shared community space: a church for the Parsons women and a literary club member’s home for the Black women. One can imagine how these women – positioned as authors – selected, arranged, edited, and published these recipes (texts). This model of authorship furthers the legacy of women as authors in the cookbook genre. In fact, several of the earliest known American cookbooks – like The Virginia Housewife by Mary Randolph (1824), a text that showcases the elaborate culinary repertoire of the Southern elite (Fisher 19) – are powerful texts by knowledgeable women, two characteristics also found in the handwritten portion of the Fin-de-Siècle cookbook.

Community as an essential part of learning to read and write can also be inferred from the processes related to producing this text; in other words, these “[community] cookbooks function as literate practices of a community, sponsored by the community members who were themselves cooks, contributors, readers, organizers and editors” (Mastrangelo 73). Indeed, physical traces of this can be seen via each recipe’s attribution to a specific woman as well as the broader fact that the women in Parsons were using their social and technical skills to engage in readerly and writerly practices tied to their growing culinary literacy. To write a cohesive cookbook, they would have had to learn the characteristics of the cookbook genre as well as its subgenres like recipes and instructions. The clear grasp of these characteristics and deft culinary knowledge is present in the neat organization of the cookbook and mirrored in the handwritten recipes which give specific unit measurements for ingredients and reflect a strong awareness of effective kitchen habits. The writer of the handwritten portion continues the practice of attributing specific recipes to specific women: for example, the “Tomatoes Pickles” recipe is attributed to Mrs. Dean while the “Coffee Cake” recipe, found a few pages later, is attributed to “Annie.”

The diversity of recipes in the second (handwritten) section hints at the importance of homemade food in the 19th century. Specifically, as someone whose culinary practices are greatly influenced by 21st-century food systems (easy availability of ingredients, prepared foods, and new food media) it is a little surprising at times to see recipes like “Good Tomato Catsup” and the instructions for mayonnaise/aioli in a “Salad” because these are two products I associate more closely with Heinz and Hellman’s. The appearance of these two condiments seems to reflect the different food practices for a woman and her household in Parsons before the advent of supermarkets and easy availability of industrial food items.

Together, the first and second parts of the Fin-de-Siècle Cook Book offer a small glimpse into the complex and vibrant American foodways of the late 19th century and their broader historical and cultural contexts. The handwritten recipes carefully capture the specialized knowledge, skills, and dedication that the woman compiler most likely possessed while also reinforcing the idea that community and gendered authorship exist in a text often overlooked as simply being a collection of memories or a collection of delightful eating. Cookbooks and recipes, just like the small handwritten portion at the back of the Fin-de-Siècle Cook Book, are masterful representations of how literacy exists in the spaces and places sometimes overlooked because of who we consider to be authors and what we consider to be literature – even if that literature is mostly pickled green tomatoes recipes.

Joohye Oh
ENGL 776 student, Spring 2025

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Elspeth Healey, Phil Cunningham, Caitlin Klepper, Whitney Baker, and Shelby Schellenger at Spencer Research Library; English 776 peers; Professor Laura Mielke; and the ladies of Parsons who compiled this cookbook.

Works Cited

Baker, Whitney. “Re: Parsons cookbook.” Email received by Joohye Oh and Caitlin Klepper, 24 April 2025.

Fisher, Carol. The American Cookbook: A History. McFarland, 2006 (Call Number: X715 .F534 2006).

Mastrangelo, Lisa. “Community Cookbooks: Sponsors of Literacy and Community Identity.” Community Literacy Journal, vol. 10, no. 1, 2015, pp. 73–86.

McHenry, Elizabeth. Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies. Duke University Press, 2002 (Call Number: PS153.N5 M36 2002).

St. John’s Episcopal Church. Fin-de-Siècle Cook Book. Parsons, Kansas, 1894 (Call Number: RH B2788).

After much deliberation, Kenneth Spencer Research Library (KSRL) will be changing its name to Topper’s Library for Dog Research (TLDR) in honor of the Kenneth and Helen Spencer’s dog Topper, pictured above. Here at KSRL, staff seek to tell the stories of the hidden figures of history, not just people of great renown. Behind every Alice Walker (RH PH P2851) or Langston Hughes (RH MS 127), there are communities who helped support these figures of history. And of course, what greater support could there be than the support of man’s best friend!

The TLDR, formerly known as the KSRL, already has many historical items featuring these good boys and girls of history, and we seek to collect and preserve even more. We’ve included some of our favorite photographs of TLDR’s canine companions below.

We here at TLDR encourage you to also take part in this important record-keeping process. Take and share a photo of a dog today. Be sure to include names and dates! Here’s hoping some doggy smiles brighten your April Fools’ Day.

Charissa Pincock
Archives and Manuscripts Coordinator

I began working as the Ringle Conservation Intern during the fall of 2024, drawn to the position as an art history graduate student with a budding interest in art conservation and passion for collecting antique photographs. Throughout the course of the semester, and the beginning of the spring 2025 semester, I was able to rehouse 2,400 glass plate negatives and contribute to the online database that will be used towards the creation of a future finding aid. Under the guidance of the incredibly kind and knowledgeable conservation staff, such as Whitney Baker, Charissa Pincock, and Kaitlin McGrath, I was able to take my first steps into the world of conservation and archival work, and will look back at this time fondly.

Throughout my time at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library Conservation Lab, I was privileged with the ability of looking into the past through the eyes of Hannah Scott, the Independence, Kansas based photographer and studio owner who operated from the 1910’s into the 1940’s. Each glass plate negative that I carefully removed from their aged and yellowed envelopes showed me a moment frozen in time; a bride on her wedding day with her bouquet cascading to the floor, a baby with a wide, toothless, grin clutching a doll, or an elderly couple still donning the out-of-fashion garb of decades past. I became an undetected observer from a distant time, one who was able to watch children and families grow over the years as they returned time and time again to Hannah’s studio.

As I made my way through the collection I was repeatedly met with glass plates that possessed faint scratches outlining the contours of a face where wrinkles tend to form, or scribbled dots speckling the skin. I continuously wondered what these etchings might be when I came across a plate that had two negatives of the same woman, but on one she was heavily freckled, and in the other, there was not a spot on her skin to be found. On the emulsion side of the plate, her freckles had been meticulously removed one-by-one with a pointed instrument of sorts to render her skin seemingly airbrushed. I instantly recognized that these “scratches” were an example of the pre-digital age method of “photoshopping” photographs, a technique that Hannah would employ to provide her customers with the option of having a perfect portrait to display.

I had read about the act of manually retouching glass plate negatives in the Victorian era, where the outer edges of a woman’s mid-section were erased to achieve the desired “wasp-waist” look. However, I thought this was an outlying and rare occurrence, but the fact that almost every plate of Hannah’s bears some evidence of retouching shows how common and pervasive this practice was. Furthermore, there was not a specific demographic of Hannah’s client that received this treatment; men and women of all ages, from infants to seniors, were able to take home a photograph of themselves looking their absolute best. Excess stray hairs, deep set wrinkles from decades of emoting, blemishes, freckles, moles, or an accidental hand or prop in the image were all able to be removed by the dedicated photographer’s technique of building up hair-thin lines to erase the undesired.

After doing some research of my own, I discovered that the practice of manually retouching glass plate negatives had been in place since the 1840s, and involved the use of either a graphite pencil or knife to scratch out or cover up whatever it may be that was preventing the desired image. Such retouching appeared almost invisible, both in the glass plate negative and in the final positive. I was able to see evidence of the retouching only when I viewed the emulsion side of the negative from a certain angle where the light could reflect off the scratches. Such a trick-of-the trade exemplifies how not so different we are today from those who lived almost a hundred years ago, and how certain behaviors, such as the editing of photographed portraits, show a formidable continuity over time. I can almost imagine the scene appearing in front of me; Hannah in her studio hunched over a negative, surrounded by various tools and instruments, a soft, rhythmic, scratching noise permeates the air as she works on perfecting her customer’s portrait, the hours ticking by, a radio playing a vintage tune hums in the background, unknowingly creating the plate that would end up in my very hands all these years later.

For further reading on manual retouching of glass plate negatives see https://pastonglass.wordpress.com/2017/11/28/the-art-of-retouching-pre-photoshop/ and https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/83262/how-photo-retouching-worked-photoshop

Alessia Serra
2024-2025 Ringle Conservation Intern
Conservation Services

This post was written by Tiffany McIntosh, who was Spencer’s Administrative Associate unit until last month. She is now the Outreach Manager at the Watkins Museum of History in downtown Lawrence.

This exhibit was developed over the last thirteen weeks as part of a final project for my master’s program in museum studies at the University of Oklahoma. To be able to graduate, I had the choice of doing a project, an internship, or a research paper. The choice of doing a project was fairly clear to me from the beginning. With guidance from an onsite supervisor, students were asked to find a museum (or similar institution) to work with to fill a need they had and to create a project that would further the student’s learning. Looking for some fun insights behind the process of curating an exhibit? Look no further!

How did the idea for this exhibit come about?

In order to graduate from my master’s program, I needed to do an independent project that I created in partnership with a cultural heritage institution. Having worked at Spencer, I felt it allowed me the opportunity to develop new skills in an environment I was already comfortable in. The project had to be outside our job scope which is why this was a great opportunity to learn new skills. Originally I was going to do an exhibit on a different topic, but my interest in the diaries in Spencer’s collections led me to the idea of Kansas in the 1800s. Knowing little about this topic, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

What was the process of creating the exhibit?

Once I came up with the idea and my project was approved, I started planning the direction I wanted to take. I began by digging through the finding aids and pulling collections to look through. I dug through over 115 collections before I found the right items for my exhibit. With the help of my onsite supervisor, Kansas Collection Curator Phil Cunningham, I was able to pin down layouts for my cases. Once my items and layouts were settled on, I scanned everything for my Omeka exhibit and sent them off to the conservation lab for treatment. After that I started the process of writing my exhibit labels. Writing labels was probably the hardest part of this whole process. There’s only so much you can portray in 100-200 words. Once my labels were ironed out, it was all just waiting for installation day. As I waited for installation, I wrote this blog post, created an activity, and worked on my Omeka exhibit.

What was the most surprising thing you discovered?

I would say I was most surprised by how hard it was to find things about rural life in the 1800s. There were plenty of ledgers, bank books, diaries (sometimes in illegible handwriting), and other things. But, there was a limited number of exhibit-worthy items that would get people thinking and talking. Finding photographs was the hardest. Every time I found one that I liked I would realize it was from the early 1900s. I suppose could have included those photos in the exhibit, but I was determined to stick to my plan.

What is the most interesting thing you learned while working on this exhibit?

I was pretty amazed that collections that have never been looked at together are interconnected. Many items in my case on Lawrence relate to each other but come from different collections. For example, I had previously worked with the J. House business card from the Lawrence business cards collection, so finding the J. House receipt in the Bowersock collection was super cool to me. It was also fun putting things into perspective. The exhibit includes a Steinbergs’ Clothing House business card, and one of the images I found has Steinbergs’ storefront in it. This might not seem cool on the surface level. When looking at the original photo you can’t read the business names. It wasn’t until I scanned and blew up the photo that I realized it showed Steinbergs’. I could go on forever but those were two of my favorite findings.

What do you hope visitors take away from this exhibit?

I hope viewers walk away with an understanding of how surprisingly different lives can be lived in a relatively close area. The author of the anonymous farmer’s diary talks about going to Kansas City, and imagining what that may have been like compared to life on the farm is just really interesting to me. I also hope people see the parallels of life in the 1800s to now. While there have been many advancements, rural farmers are still secluded from city life in a way while Massachusetts Street in Lawrence is still booming with business.

At the end of the day, this project has been a blast. I never thought I would be creating a physical exhibit as part of my program, one curated entirely by me at that. I have learned so many skills and things about my thought process throughout this semester. Things like the ups and downs of writing labels, or thinking you found the perfect item only to find it is in poor condition, or you can’t read it, or it does not fit the time frame. I hope visitors are able to feel some connection when they walk away from the exhibit.

Tiffany McIntosh
Spencer Public Services/Watkins Museum of History

Check the blog each Friday for a new “That’s Distinctive!” post. I created this series to provide a lighthearted glimpse into the diverse and unique items at Spencer. “That’s Distinctive!” is meant to show that the library has something for everyone regardless of interest. If you have suggested topics for a future item feature or questions about the collections, you can leave a comment at the bottom of this page. All collections, including those highlighted on the blog, are available for members of the public to explore in the Reading Room during regular hours.

This week on That’s Distinctive! we continue on our journey of spooky items. Today I am sharing yet another item from the Herd family papers. With the collection spanning the time frame of 1817 to 2013, there is just about anything a person could be looking for. The item shown today is a dance card from KU’s third annual all-university Halloween party. It took place in 1917, six months after the U.S. entered World War I. The card shows that it was held in Robinson Gymnasium, which was located where Wescoe Hall now stands. The current Robinson Center is just east of Allen Fieldhouse.

Tiffany McIntosh
Public Services