Saturday, December 29, 2018

Recipes from a 1929 Midlands Cookbook

Closeup of cover of Southern Recipes by Elizabeth G. Guion.
Elizabeth G. Guion, born Elizabeth Guinard, was born in Columbia, South Carolina in 1880. In 1897, she graduated from the Presbyterian College for Women which was housed in the present day Hampton Preston mansion. In 1929 she published a cookbook, entitled Southern Recipes from Old Green Hill Plantation, where she was living in Lugoff outside Columbia using R.L. Bryan as her printer, Columbia's oldest continuously operating business.

A WorldCat search on this cookbook, which I suspect was privately published, shows only two libraries in the world holding it. The South Caroliniana here in Columbia and Michigan State University over 600 miles away. My copy contains notations in many of the recipes written in pencil. I'm not sure if these are by a previous owner or Elizabeth herself, correcting errors and omissions.

I present to you the cookbook below. The page numbers skip because the back of each page was blank. Let me know if you cook anything from it by emailing me at hardyhchilders@gmail.com.