Centennial Cookbook, handmade cookbook, 1961
Riley Historical Society
Manhattan, KS
“All of the cities and many of the larger Kansas towns have a Mexican community in which the typical facets of Mexican culture are continued. Here the younger generation, although assimilated, keeps alive its cultural heritage in various ways…” - Centennial Cookbook
Despite racial tensions brewing in the 1960s, the Centennial Cookbook published in 1961 celebrates a diverse and multicultural range of recipes. The volume’s objective is to acknowledge a nation made from immigrants.
The cookbook is small in surface area, measuring only 8.5 by 5.5 inches, but the geographic borders from where it draws its inspiration are vast. The Centennial Cookbook’s cover makes only the claim that it is a commemoration of Kansas history in honor of the 100th anniversary, yet inside it delves into a multitude of cultures from Native American to Greek foodways. The Centennial Cookbook, for example, offers a look into authentic Mexican recipes shared by Dolores Silva who owned a Mexican restaurant, called El Patio, with her sister in Manhattan, Kansas. Her restaurant was a town favorite, and Silva’s recipes construct a vexed legacy of Mexican American heritage, hardship, isolation, and inclusion in a small Midwestern university town.
Joyce Friedel