Community, domestic labor, technology, and commercial food: what an early 20th-century recipe box can tell us

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ABSTRACT A recipe box collected by Winifred Kowalke of Madison, Wisconsin, in the first half of the 20th century provides a rare glimpse into domesticity in the first half of the twentieth century as technological developments, an evolving convenience-foods industry, and a thriving female network dramatically changed lives, especially those of middle-class women. A careful reading of the cards in the box discloses the impact of new technology on cooking methods, the influence of the emerging commercial market of manufactured foods on the content of the American diet, and the strength of women’s networks in sustaining a vibrant female community. Most importantly, it is a story that reaches beyond the ideals presented in women’s magazines and contemporary cookbooks to reveal the lived experiences of women in that period. Winifred Kowalke was civic minded. Her recipe box reinforces the image of a woman active in the community and knitted into an extensive, interlacing social network that encompassed a diversity of prominent Madisonians and local cooks. Her friends were community leaders, but their civic and social activities did not divorce them from the domestic world. Her civic and organizational lives melded with her domestic.