So, this one has been on my radar for a while. I saw it first on Esty but I hesitated and waited too long. Someone else snagged it and I’ve always had a regret in the back of my mind for not buying it when I first saw it.
I was able to get a copy of Irma Walker Ross’ Recipes from the East on eBay from a seller up in the Portland, Washington area. The listing didn’t show the copyright page, so I was hoping it was an early or first printing.
Sadly, it was not.
When the copy arrived, my local post office had done its usual and a few pieces of the small, black spiral spine had been crushed. But, the original listing had an image of a cracked spiral spine…so it’s not like it was perfect before it arrived.
Anyways, the copyright page has this one from the eleventh printing in 1963. I’m few years out from the original 1955 printing. But I have seen copies that were twenty-fourth printing for more money than this copy. So I’m okay.
But now that I’m looking at it….is this cover racist?
Very cartoonish and I don’t think if it were published in today’s climate that people would look at it with forgiving eyes.
When you dig into the history of how this cookbook came together, I see it all started as recipe-collecting through travels and being sent recipes from China, Japan, Hawaii, the Philippines, India and Russia. She would have friends translate the recipes into English and then evolve the recipe to Western tastes. Then, she made recipe cards and sent them out as Christmas cards. The cards and recipes were a hit and then made into this cookbook.
If you look at the timeframe, this cookbook was a great way to bring Asian flavors to a wider audience, especially in a post-World War II era and a newly-ended Korean War era.
But I’m curious about how authentic these recipes could be. There’s a line on the back cover and a passage from the Author’s Foreward that is all sorts of disconnected.
These culinary masterpieces of the East, though authentic versions of age-old and beloved delicacies, can all be prepared from materials readily available to the American housewife.
Changing an Oriental recipe so that a Westerner will enjoy it isn’t as easy as it sounds. We experimented and tested the recipes in my home…
I’m not sure how authentic a recipe can be if you’ve spent time switching out ingredients so that it is more appealing to a Western palate?