Cleora's Kitchens: The Memoir of a Cook : And Eight Decades of Great American Food

Rating:
Summary: Best Cookbook in the Schlesinger (Ratcliffe) Collection
Review: "This cookbook/memoir by a beloved black Oklahoma cook was ahead of its time for in the twenty years since it was first published books that combine recipes with autobiography have become a distinct genre...it is my favorite in the Schlesinger Cookbook collection because it expresses through food...joy," says Barbara Haber in the Boston Globe. This cookbook is wonderful, joyful and a delight to use....and the famous baked fudge is the best chocolate desert in the world.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful book, but no intros for the recipes
Review: I collect cookbooks (and own about 2,000), and three of my all-time favorite authors are Edna Lewis, Vertamae, and the Darden sisters -- all of whom are African Americans. Their books are written with incredible warmth, and introduce each recipe so you'll know what to expect, and why it is special to them. Although Cleora Butler appears to have been a singularly gifted and accomplished cook, I didn't get the "warm fuzzies" derived from other African American authors. I had bought the hardcover edition, but ended up giving it away ... as a Northeastern WASP
who knew little about either African American or southern cooking, I really missed not having warm intros or descriptions of the recipes. This is a real shame, since Ms. Butler appears to have accomplished wonders in that environment during that period, and I really wanted to love her book.