NORMAN — Mae Cox has a good sense of Cleveland County’s history. Now she’s got a taste of it, too.
The longtime county resident, working with the Cleveland County Genealogical Society, has just published a “Heritage Cookbook,” complete with 220 homespun recipes contributed by society members and others.
From candy to canning, the 216-page book shares those family recipes that have been passed down from generations. Better yet, most of them have a short history lesson about the cooks. After reading the short notes on the cooks, I’ll need to now go back and read the recipes.
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“I thought it was really important to do,” Cox said. “It’s kind of my donation to the society.”
She spent about eight months on the project. The first batch of 200 books is nearly gone but another order is expected. They’ll have plenty to sell as Christmas gifts either online through the genealogical society’s website or over the counter Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the CCGS library, 1119 E. Main St.
“We’re selling lots of them,” she said.
One of Mae’s contributed recipes is for rabbit stew. Seems her grandmother Mary May Upchurch Davenport served the stew frequently. During the mid 1920s, the family struggled to keep food on their table. There were eight children. Two of the oldest sons provided a lot of the game.
They hunted and caught fish on Buckhead Creek. When it came to rabbits, birds, turkeys, possums, raccoons and other wild game, they didn’t use a gun or bow and arrow. They only threw rocks at them to bring them home.
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Betty January Hall’s story involved bananas, not rocks. Her father worked construction in Oklahoma City and brought home bananas and a case of root beer. Her mother, Viola Lewis January, made banana fritters every Friday night. “My, how we did eat and drink,” she wrote.
Descygne Rushing Eskridge contributed her aunt Lola Pearl Madole’s pork and apple casserole recipe. Madole moved with her parents to Lexington in 1928. She married Walter Robbins in 1937 and they owned and operated the We-Wash It in Norman, a laundry popular with university students.
Francis Marble, Jr., shared his mother’s peanut brittle recipe. Mary Elizabeth King, born in the Franklin Community of Cleveland County, married Francis Marion “Buster” Marble in 1927. They farmed until moving to Norman in 1958. Mary worked as a cook at OU until 1971 when they moved back to a farm southeast of Little Axe.
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Some of the older recipes weren’t very sophisticated. Most of the ingredients were things that could be found on family farms. The recipes list the ingredients but came with few instructions since back then we just expected that all women could figure it out. They also came before microwaves, deep freezes and meat thermometers were popular.
Pictures of women in the kitchen were hard to find. Cox estimates she had about 1,200 back and forth e-mails from cookbook contributors. She wanted the recipes, the stories and the photos to be historically accurate.
“What took so long was getting proofed copies back. We wanted to get it right.”
Andy Rieger 366-3543 editor@normantranscript.com
