page_title: Malinda Russell
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Malinda Russell / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Domestic Cook Book: Containing a Careful Selection of Useful Receipts for the Kitchen
context_page_description: Malinda Russell was a free black woman from Tennessee who earned her living as a cook and published the first known cookbook by a black woman in the United States. The book is historically significant, as it shows that black Southern cooking was not solely the domain of poverty cooking, but provides evidence of a sophisticated cosmopolitan skill with complex dishes.
context_section_description: Russell became a cook, predominantly of baked goods. She married Anderson Vaughn while still in Virginia and had an invalid son with him. Vaughn died after four years and Russell began working as a laundress to support herself and their child. At some point, she returned to Tennessee and operated a boarding house on Chuckey Mountain near Cold Spring for three years. She then ran a successful pastry shop for around six years. When her Tennessee home was raided by traveling gangs of whites in 1864, she fled with her son to Paw Paw, Michigan, where she published the first known cookbook by a black woman, Domestic Cook Book: Containing a Careful Selection of Useful Receipts for the Kitchen, as a means to provide income for her and her son and earn money to return  to Greeneville, Tennessee. Within months of her publication, the town of Paw Paw was destroyed by fire and further trace of Russell is unknown.
  Russell self-published her book, in 1866, giving a brief history of her life and stating in the preface to it that she hoped to earn passage to return home from its proceeds. Most of the recipes were for elegant deserts, like floating island, puff pastry and rose cake, along with main course dishes like catfish fricassee, Irish potatoes with cod, and sweet onion custard, containing none of the soul food traditionally accepted as Southern cuisine. She also provided recipes for ointments and colognes, as well as household tips. The book, containing 265 recipes, was written for people who already knew how to cook, as little instruction for preparation methods is given. Most recipes contain a list of ingredients, though in some cases, a cooking tip is provided.
caption: Domestic Cook Book: Containing a Careful Selection of Useful Receipts for the Kitchen 1866
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