Carolina Rice Cook Book. Compiled by Mrs. Samuel G. Stoney

Charleston, S.C.: Carolina Rice Kitchen Association; Presses The Lucas-Richardson Co, 1901. Booklet, stapled in wrappers (lacking) (18.5 x 11.5 cm.), 91, [13] pages. Advertisements. ~ Evident FIRST EDITION. Margaret Cook records this as the first South Carolina community cookbook. At least two other non-community cookbooks from the Palmetto State precede this book by some decades: The Carolina Receipt Book by a “Lady of Charleston” (1832) and Sarah Rutledge’s Carolina Housewife (1847). A third book, clearly a community cookbook, Old Receipts from Old St. Johns, compiled by the Pinopolis Civic League emerged circa 1900 but remains undated (and unrecorded by Cook), and thus the priority of these books is unclear. However, we do know that in 1901, Mrs. Samuel Stoney compiled The Carolina Rice Cook Book by gathering recipes from around the region. Karen Hess writes of the book (in her seminal work on the subject, The Carolina Rice Kitchen: The African Connection), “This charming booklet, containing some 237 receipts for rice, was compiled in 1901 by Louisa Cheves Smythe Stoney, wife of Captain Samuel... Stoney, a figure in his own right but most pertinently chairman of the Carolina Rice Kitchen Association, seated in Charleston... the work was ‘offered at the South Carolina Interstate and West Indian Exposition as a 25-cent souvenir,’ adding that ‘the exposition was a sort of world’s fair meant to inject some spark in the moribund Carolina economy.’... But we still have Carolina Rice Cook Book, which has become exceedingly rare... Mrs. Stoney also included receipts obtained from the interested ladies of Low Country society, including some of the proudest names of the old rice aristocracy and their cooks, to be sure, although they are seldom credited and if they are, then by their old slave names. In short, it is a period piece, but this is what is important about the book. That is, it reflects one aspect of the period, the unique rice kitchen of Low Country Carolina, the glory of which was also beginning to fade as the old African-American cooks departed from the scene, one after the other.” Numerous advertisements in rear for South Carolina rice brands, dealers, and other local businesses. ~ There are two variants of book’s wrapper design: this one, with a sheaf of rice and the cover title Carolina Rice Cook Book; and another, with an image of a pot hanging in the fire, and the alternate cover title, The Old Carolina Rice Pot. Both indicate “Price 25 Cents” at the foot of the front panel. This copy lacks the front panel of the wrapper. Title and several other leaves with corner missing. Good only. Very rare. [OCLC locates eleven copies of this first printing, and one copy at NYPL indicated as 1902; Brown 4151; Cook, page 241, not in Cagle].