Lizzie Black Kander

Lizzie Black Kander

Lizzie Black Kander (1858–1940) was born in Wisconsin to German Jewish immigrants. In 1896 she founded the Keep Clean Mission at B'ne Jeshurun Temple in Milwaukee to help educate young Jewish girls to assimilate to a more mainstream American way of life. This was followed by the similarly conceived Milwaukee Jewish Mission at Emanu-El Guild Hall. In 1901 she moved her work to The Settlement, on North 5th Street. (Charitable social work among immigrants was often called "settlement work" at that time.)

Once of Kander's aims was to teach young girls to cook and keep house. As she later recounted, her students spent a lot of time copying recipes from a chalk board, so she decided to print the recipes in the form of a cookbook to save them time. Writing as "Mrs. Simon Kander" (after her husband's name), she compiled a 174 page collection of recipes, household hints, and advice on housekeeping. None of the local Jewish religious organizations would help her fund the project, but the husband of one of her female friends was a printer, and he agreed to undertake the work, which was supported by selling advertisements. Although the officlal title of the book was "The Way to A Man's Heart ... The Settlement Cook Book," it is generally known as "The Settlement Cook Book."

The first "Settlement Cook Book" came out in 1901 and its 1,000 copies sold out within one year. It was greatly expanded and reprinted on a regular basis, and funds from book sales allowed The Settlement, of which Kander was the president, to buy land on North 9th Street in 1910 and to erect a new building there in 1912. "The Settlement Cook Book" proved so popular that 34 subsequent editions—totalling 2 million copies—followed the original edition. The third edition of 1931 is probably the most popular with cookbook collectors.

What sets "The Settlement Cook Book" apart from other recipe books of its time period is the fact that Lizzie Kander, while trying to help foreign girls become "good Americans," also assembled the first and largest collection of ethnic Jewish and German recipes ever published. Her simple, intelligent, and straightforward authorial style marks the early editions of the work, and her willingness to publish as many as five or six variations of a simple cookie or torte recipe make the collection a unique slice-of-life glimpse into Jewish American cookery of the early 20th century. Kander wrote and edited the book until her death; afterwards it was revised by members of The Settlement Cook Book Company. It has remained in print for more than 100 years, both in current revisions and in facsimile reprints of earlier editions.

External links

* [http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/topics/kander/index.asp Lizzie Black Kander at the Wisconsin Historical Society]
* [http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/cookbooks/html/books/book_52.cfm "The Settlement Cookbook"] (6th ed.), available at Michigan State University's website [http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/cookbooks/index.html "Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project."]


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