top of page

Cookbooks are bafflingly eclectic texts that mingle different categories of knowledge. More than mere lists of ingredients and instructions, they are unruly archives that construct food histories, gender expectations, family and community narratives, dietary and medicinal cares, and social records that chronicle daily life, both inside and outside the kitchen.

  

​Based on undergraduate research conducted in the Kansas State English Honors seminar “How to Cook a Raccoon: The Memory Work of Recipe Collections”, this digital exhibition examines historic recipes housed at the Riley Historical Society and family heirlooms that were written, collected, and cherished by Kansans, often over generations, and the stories they have passed along with them. How to Cook a Raccoon understands these books and artifacts as windows into dazzling and usually unexplored local experiences that link the present to the past, and link Kansas to larger American stories and to the world. These seven case studies are also an attempt to give a voice to Midwestern food lovers and to help them cook some of their delicious, intriguing or intriguingly bizarre recipes.

class photo 1.jpg

We hope you enjoy How to Cook a Raccoon and invite you to share your thoughts, suggestions, and discoveries on our comments page. By design, How to Cook a Raccoon is a work in progress, and we hope that it will become a richer archive with each future cookbook class. Thank you for exploring How to Cook a Raccoon.

bottom of page