Other Mostly-Untapped Reference Resources

Last week I wrote about using vintage cookbooks for more novel detail and to give your novel authenticity and accuracy. I didn’t mention another “new” cookbook that I recently acquired.

You know Toll House cookies, right? The cookie was created by Ruth Graves Wakefield who ran the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts. She and her husband bought an old toll stop house and converted it to an inn. Ruth’s cooking became famous so she wrote a cookbook in 1931. She later sold her now-famous recipe for Chocolate Crunch Cookies to Toll House chocolates. Her story is so interesting, I believe it deserves telling here at some point.

The book is a cornucopia of information about the 1930s and 1940s. Recipes, food available in season, manners and etiquette, and more. If your era is early twentieth century, this cookbook could help.

Where else, you may wonder, might you acquire “insider information” from commonplace resources on your era?

Historical research leads one to primary documents like newspapers and magazines to find obits and articles about topics of interest. But take another bit of time and look over the ads around the articles. You will see pictures of machines, tools, clothing, and more that you could tap for inclusion in your novel.

Again, including artifacts appropriate to your time period lends credibility to your novel as well as making it more descriptive.

If you are focused on early- to mid-century stories, there are lots of archived TV and radio programs that can give you a feel for the time. The cultural info you will get about dialogue patterns and vocabulary/slang of the era can be directly transferred to your characters’ interactions.

And watch/listen to the commercials of your era. Look for patterns such as were there lots of tonics for digestion? Those patterns provide clues as to what concerns people of the era had so that you can refer to them as well.

Yet another source of information for you is to read novels written during your era, the contemporary fiction of the times. Again, you will get cultural references and language pattern information that you can use.

This post won’t work, obviously, for all eras. But once there is print available to the general public, you can explore the cultural aspects of your era.

If you are writing about the Roman Empire, I'm sorry. None of this applies. Another time, perhaps, you'll find something helpful.

UPDATE:

I attended a session at Left Coast Crime about historical fiction mysteries. Fascinating! The panel moderator was Laurie King, and the panelists were Catriona McPherson, Priscilla Royal, Kelli Stanley, and Jennifer Kincheloe.

One question asked for resources, beyond the traditional primary resources, that these authors used. I was happy to hear that perusing ads in periodicals was recommended as was letters to the editor to get a feel for issues of the time. I am listing their unusual ones here for you to tuck into your research arsenal.

Check out Baedeker guides first published in the 1830s for names of hotels, etc. and real peoples’ reviews of them that you can include as details. You also can find out what’s on restaurants’ menus.

Also, add an almanac to your arsenal that will give you events for days so you can refer to them. McPherson said, “You don’t want your date to be when the king dies and you never even mention it.”

Need to name characters? Check out Census rolls for the era. Also there are books of names (and Internet sites) for different years with their different spellings. The white pages of phone books are another resource for names. Use the yellow pages for actual businesses that existed in your time frame. The Oxford English Dictionary of Christian Names (not just Christian) is another resource.

Books on the history of American slang will help keep your language accurate for the era.

This session was well worth attending, don’t you agree?

Vintage Cookbooks: A Mostly Untapped Historical Resource

Okay, maybe not totally ignored, but I venture to say that few historical fiction authors go hunting for vintage cookbooks of their era in order to add yet another level of veracity and fulsomeness to the story. A dinner scene described and not just mentioned. An interaction in the kitchen while preparing food that reveals some intrigue brewing. A shopping trip to the village market for local produce that allows observation of an historic event.

These are some of the ways vintage cookbooks can beef up (so to speak), your novel’s authenticity and inform the reader of culinary aspects they might not know of. We want to tell a good story, right, but we also want to illuminate our era so others learn and are as fascinated as we are.

I collect vintage cookbooks (and replicas of cookbooks no longer available or beyond my budget). They are fascinating! The oldest cookbook to survive is 2500 years old. Fish with Feta was described by Mithaecus, who lived in the late 5^th century B.C.E.

He was Sicilian who spoke Greek. He is the one, purportedly, who brought knowledge of Sicilian cooking to Greece. He also worked in Sparta and in Athens. He got kicked out of Sparta because he was a bad influence. Plato dissed him in his work, Gorgias.

Not only is his the first cookbook in Greece, his cookbook, The Art of Cookery, is the earliest cookbook author whose name is known in any language.

Only one of his recipes survives, unfortunately. When I tell you the original recipe, you’ll see why people have adapted it. In a single sentence, here is Mithaecus’ recipe for the fish, tainia: ‘Gut, discard the head, rinse, slice; add cheese and oil.’ Inside the fish? On the top? A cook of the era would know.

Even then, good cooks knew you didn’t have to spell out everything. Of course you cooked it! Just the facts, ma’am. ‘Tainia’ is known in modern Greek as ‘kordella’. Apparently adding cheese to the fish was a controversial move back in the day. One Greek guy warned about spoiling good fish by adding cheese. To adapt this recipe, use tilapia, haddock, or another firm white fish.

If you want to try it, my adapted recipe (with stuff he didn’t have access to) for “Fish with Feta” based on Mithaecus is below.

But back to cookbooks, when I was working on my middle grade bio of Elizabeth Jennings Graham, I got hold of recipes from an 1840’s cookbook that I could include in the text to show the kind of food Elizabeth might have helped her mother prepare.

Anyone interested in Victorian and Edwardian eras should know about the Downton Abbey cookbooks and Downton Abbey: Rules for Household Staff. These are not themselves vintage, but they include pretty accurate era-specific recipes (updated with ingredients and directions) to bring realism to your work.

Another cookbook/household management book that is vintage for the era is the 1112 page, 1861 Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, a compilation of newspaper columns over a two-year period. My copy is a replica, obviously! There’s an interesting back story to this book that I might share on this blog someday. Fascinating!

But back the volume,

As I work on my historical fiction of a Singua woman from the mid-15^th century, I am tapping into recipes for cooking game as hunters do when they cook in the wild. Catching the food and cooking it was an essential element of her culture, and I want to be as accurate as I can be.

One thing I have noticed as a difference between vintage cookbooks and modern cookbooks is the amount of detail. Few if any pictures are in vintage cookbooks. Often they give information about availability of certain foods in specific seasons. They didn’t have access to foods in the same way we do.

All in all, reading cookbooks of different eras offers cultural insights and allows for another layer of authenticity for your writing. Happy cookbooking!

Fish with Feta (adapted from 2500 year old Greek recipe)

¾-1 pound of fresh white fish fillets (tilapia, haddock, etc.)

¼ cup plain dried bread crumbs or panko

3 ounces feta cheese, crumbled

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon minced fresh dill

1 tablespoon minced fresh chives

Fresh ground pepper

Take fish out of refrigerator 30 minutes before cooking.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Mince fresh dill & fresh chives.

Combine bread crumbs/panko, feta, olive oil, dill, and chives in a bowl.

Pepper the fish and place it on a lightly greased baking sheet.

Lightly press the bread crumb mixture on top of each fillet.

Bake the fish uncovered until the fish is firm and cooked through, about 20 minutes.

Serve immediately.

Book Review: The Taste of Air

One quote I loved and read several times serves as the theme of The Taste of Air, I believe. “The chain of connections and separations is how our lives pass.” So beautiful and so true not just in the context of this novel.

Cleare used one of my favorite devices in her tale: Alternating chapters for different points of view AND time periods. Having lived through the Viet Nam years described in her book, I could relate to the angst and the horrors she shared. I had friends and relatives there. We got a feel for the era in the mother’s chapters that brought back vivid memories and images. This book isn’t billed as historical fiction, but HF readers will find much to like.

Gail Cleare’s USA Today Bestseller is a novel of three women, a mom and her two daughters who discover that they may not be as familiar with one another as they had thought. It is a novel that will move your spirit through recognition of your own life and your relationships with those close to you. How well do we really know anyone, even those we think we know best?

We learn that each woman’s secrets, yearnings, struggles, and choices have an effect on their own lives and the lives of those closest to them. When Nell learns that her gravely ill mother led a secret life for decades, she is hurt, baffled, and determined to unravel the mysteries created by her mother’s choices. She enlists the aid of her sister, Bridget, and her mother’s closest secret friends, breaking down their barriers meant to protect their mother.

Through their discoveries about their mother’s secrets and the reasons for them, Nell and Bridget come to realizations about their own lives that, in the end, profoundly affect both of them. Each woman struggles with what self-actualization, modeled by their mother’s actions, must mean in their own lives.

The theme of air plays out in a variety of ways, from the mother’s ventilator to the freshness of country air to the emotional air that separation from the familiar provides. Cleare uses air in so many literal and metaphorical ways that one finds oneself looking for the next description.

Cleare’s descriptive language is poetic, evoking literary fiction without the pretentiousness of some books in that genre. She creates scenes with words that put you in the middle with the action, sights, smells, and tastes happening all around. It is a beautifully written book.

I loved The Taste of Air, and I predict you will, too. It touches us on so many levels.

You can read your own copy of this beautiful novel. The Taste of Air, published by Red Adept Publishing, is available on Amazon.

Disclosure:

This review is modified from one I posted on another of my blogs, Romance Righter, by Angelica French, my romance pen name.