Call Number:

MSS 0794

Repository:

University of Delaware Library Special Collections

Extent:

1 linear foot

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

MSS 0794, Lucie Jenkins Johnson culinary ephemera collection, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware.

Date:

1904-2015 (inclusive)

Creator:

Johnson, Lucie Jenkins, 1927-2016

Form:

Printed ephemera, Recipes, Magazines (periodicals), and Cookbooks

Abstract:

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.

Lucie Threkeld McKee Jenkins was born in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, to Alexander Heady Jenkins and Mary Lee Igleheart on February 10, 1927. Following her graduation from Averett College and Wake Forest University, she began a career in social work with a focus on child welfare. She moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, after marrying Glenn Edgar Johnson in 1952. While in New Orleans, Lucie Jenkins Johnson obtained her Masters in Social Work from Tulane University.

The Johnsons later moved to Louisville, Kentucky; Richmond, Virginia; and Detroit, Michigan before retiring to North Carolina. Lucie Jenkins Johnson taught social work at Richmond Professional Institute's School of Social Work and Wayne State University. While in Detroit, she also helped set up an oncology care center at Harper Hospital and performed medical social work at Mt. Sinai Hospital. She maintained a strong interest in social work following her retirement and helped organize an oral history project through the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill focused on former social workers. Lucie Jenkins Johnson passed away on November 15, 2016, in Columbus, Ohio.

Lucie Jenkins Johnson's homemaking talents, interest in American foodways, and residence in various parts of the United States is reflected in this collection of culinary ephemera and her collection of regional and ethnic cookbooks, which she donated to the University of Delaware Library. Her lifelong culinary interests reflect the era and regions in which she lived. She grew up in a small Kentucky town during the Depression, lived through World War II food rationing, and experienced the post-war economic boom as a working woman who raised four children. She applied life lessons from farm cooking and the advances of rural electrification, home economics and household management taught to all young girls of her generation, and eagerly adopted the home appliances that accompanied American suburban life from the 1950s forward. Her interest in the richness and diversity of American ethnic foodways was sparked in New Orleans and greatly expanded when her family moved to Detroit in the 1970s.

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.