[Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2012, vol. 37, no. 3]  2012 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0097-9740/2012/3703-0015$10.00 KennanFerguson Intensifying Taste, Intensifying Identity: Collectivity through Community Cookbooks I n 1975, a collective of women in Spencer, Iowa, published a book of recipes as part of a church fund-raiser. Calling themselves “Lutheran Church Women,” as each was a member of Spencer’s Trinity Lutheran Church, they collected close to seven hundred recipes from other members (exclusively women), organized and typeset each recipe, designed and drew covers and dividers between sections, and added a number of un- attributed prayers and poems. At the bottom of many pages, they added helpful household tips and uplifting aphorisms. As an introduction, they reprinted their (male) pastor’s blessing, which included the honorific as- signation: “Lord of all pots and pans and things make you a saint in your ‘Kitchenthedral’” (Lutheran Church Women 1975, iii). 1 Finally, they sent the manuscript off to two women in Iowa Falls, Phyllis Harris and Dorothy Surratt, whose business provided templates, stock pages (in this case one Many community cookbooks were locally printed or printed through small incorporated publishing companies (e.g., Phyllis Harris and Dorothy Surratt’s General Publishing and Binding in Iowa Falls, Iowa). Often these publications were not copyrighted and do not have dates listed for their publication. Guesses as to broad dates of publication can be made, at least in terms of decades, according to paper stock, print, layout (e.g., on a computer’s dot matrix printer as opposed to typewritten), photography, the era in which the compiling organization existed, when the publishing company began dating cookbooks, or even trends in illustration. In these cases, an approximate date is listed. The majority of these uncopy- righted community cookbooks are archived in the Cookbook Collection at Texas Women’s University in Denton, Texas. My thanks to Dawn Letson and Kimberly Johnson, librarians of that collection; to Mary Hawkesworth and three anonymous reviewers for Signs ; and to the Office of the Dean of the College of Letters and Science at the University of Wisconsin– Milwaukee for supporting the travel for this research. 1 Although some community cookbooks list a primary organizer or coordinator, these names rarely appear on the books’ covers or title pages. Thus, I have followed the com- munities’ lead and list their authorship as a collective, unless the text implies a primary editor. Here, Lutheran Church Women are naming themselves, but to refer to them does not include all women of the Lutheran church, nor even all women of this church. The Lutheran Church Women may be an organizational group, but to emphasize the authorial identity of this book, “Lutheran Church Women” is the author. This content downloaded from 129.089.019.233 on August 11, 2016 12:36:41 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).