The Literary Cookbook - Faculty Spotlight: Carrie Tippen, Ph.D.

Chatham Assistant Professor of English Carrie Tippen’s interests span literary studies and food studies, an intersection that she explores through the analysis of cookbooks.

How did your interest in examining cookbooks begin?

CT: I studied American and Southern literature in my undergrad and master’s programs, so when I started my Ph.D., I was sure that I was going to keep studying novels of the Southern Renaissance like William Faulkner and Eudora Welty. But I had just gotten interested in food and gender through my own experiences of trying to learn to cook as an adult. I had always avoided learning to cook because I resisted most anything “girly.” But after I left home, I really wanted to eat some of my childhood foods, and there was no way to get them without cooking them myself. I started collecting recipes and stories from family and friends. It got me thinking a lot about food and identity, but I didn’t know it was a thing I could study until I discovered there was an already well-established field called food studies that was doing this work. I saw the intersection of literary studies and food studies really clearly in cookbooks.

What is meant by “the literary cookbook?”

CT: I think of a literary cookbook as one that signals to the holder that it is not strictly intended for use in the kitchen. The cookbook addresses a reader rather than a user. Literary cookbooks emphasize story and imagination in equal or greater proportion to practical use.

These signals can be physical like in the binding: a useful cookbook might have a spiral binding so that it lays out flat on a counter. A literary cookbook might have a more traditional binding that needs your hands to stay open. Titles can be a signal, too. A subtitle like “Memories with Recipes” is a good clue that the memories are most important.

“It never occurred to me to think about cookbooks as anything other than useful until I was fully a year into my doctoral program.”

If cookbooks have gotten more literary in recent years (and it seems as though they have) why do you think that is?

CT: I have a few theories. One is that the market for cookbooks is strong but crowded. How does a cookbook distinguish itself from all the others? By having something that no other cookbook can have: a specific tone, voice, and personality of a singular author. The more that the cookbook can be about the person who wrote it, and the more popular and attractive that person is, the more it can stand out in the crowd of books.

And with the popularity of food blogs, Instagram, and TV, celebrity chefs are more visible than ever. When you buy an Ina Garten or Marcus Samuelsson or Ottolenghi cookbook, you are buying a connection to those people. And that connection is built not just on knowing their names but knowing their stories and their voices, too. Since so many of us get to know these celebrities through their writing and speaking, we expect that writing and storytelling to be part of the book, too.

A third theory that is my favorite has to do with copyright law. Recipes aren’t protected by copyright. Lists of ingredients and formulas for preparation aren’t “original.” But what is copyright protected is “significant literary expression.” So recipe writers add tone and voice to the recipe language so they can tell when someone has copied it without giving them credit. And they add stories as headnotes to the recipes that describe how they were invented so that the author can claim ownership of the recipe as original.

So much of what you are buying in a cookbook these days is a relationship with an author, and the way they make you feel that you know them is through story.

Your book examined ways in which Southern cookbook writers established authenticity. Can you give us a few examples of how they did that, attempting to reconcile the South’s complicated history?

CT: Right. The first way we think about authenticity is to think about tradition. We know something is authentic because it has been passed down through history. But in the South, history is fraught with human bondage, poverty, racial violence, segregation, and environmental degradation. So many “traditional” Southern foods have their start in the transatlantic slave trade. A lot of cookbooks will turn this into something very vague like “peanuts are popular in West African cooking” or “okra came from Africa” without directly addressing how and why these foods arrived. They are still signaling authenticity through tradition, but they aren’t being totally honest.

“There’s a feeling that cookbooks are too fun and light to really make any statement about social justice or serious issues of our day, but I don’t think that really takes into account all the complexities of the genre or some of the exciting new books that are coming out these days.”

Instead of getting into that sticky situation, many cookbook writers leave the distant past behind and instead argue for a different kind of authenticity. One way is to give credit to a specific source that readers will recognize as authoritative. Grandma’s recipe has to be authentic. Grandma knows what is up! Another way is to be authentic in the way of “being true to yourself.” Instead of trying to make some kind of sweeping generalization about the South, the writer instead just tries to convince the reader that they are a “real Southerner” so that anything they make emerges from that genuine place of just being themselves. It’s really interesting to think about how many ways that writers can signal authenticity and to wonder why readers are so attracted to it.

You taught “The Literary Cookbook” as a seminar. Can you tell me about that class?

CT: The class is usually equal parts undergraduates who are majoring in English and creative writing and graduate students in creative writing and food studies. Every class discussion really seems to circle back to a few questions: What does it mean to be literature or literary? And what makes a cookbook a special kind of book? We read a lot of cookbooks, and students go out in search of cookbooks that interest them. We read pretty much all the cookbook scholarship there is and try to think through the many ways to read a cookbook from the point of view of different fields of study—history, rhetoric, communication, gender studies, and literature.

“It’s the class most closely related to my research that I get to teach, so it’s always a joy. I learn so much from hearing how students who have never been asked to read a cookbook critically in their lives approach them with their creative instincts. There aren’t any ‘right ways’ to read, and they always surprise me with their insights.”

They write cookbook reviews and literary analysis of cookbooks. For the final project, they can either write a sample from their own literary cookbook (a popular choice!) or do an extended analysis of a cookbook of their choosing. I’m offering it again in spring 2021!

This article was originally published in the Winter 2020 issue of the Chatham Recorder alumni magazine.