Creating community, one byte at a time: Digital community cookbooks during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Community cookbooks, also known as charity cookbooks, have existed in the United States since the Civil War. Originally designed to raise money for war widows and orphans, these cookbooks have remained a fundraising staple for church groups, women’s social clubs, schools, and other non-profits and reflect people and places from specific points in time. With the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent quarantines and isolations came a rise in digital quarantine cookbooks that functioned as fundraisers and reflected the makeup of communities like their hard-copy ancestors. By placing digital quarantine cookbooks within the established genre of community cookbooks, we see how this new digital practice attempts community through connection and solidarity in the face of isolation and separation.