Cather's Kitchens: Foodways in Literature and Life

This rambling paean to Willa Cather and the plain food of the Nebraska frontier gathers excerpts from Cather's novels, and recipes from regional archives and cookbooks found in the Cather family kitchen library. The loosely organized ""receipts'' include biscuits, apple and potato dumplings, watermelon-rind preserves, corn soup, lemon pie, molasses beer, as well as a technique for curing 100 pounds of ham. The husband-and-wife authors (he is an associate professor of English and anthropology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln; she is a freelance writer) acknowledge that many of the recipesregarding preparation and derivationare incomplete or confusing (``The only guarantee . . . is the assurance of our best wishes. Consider them to be . . . mysteries rather than maps''). Neither, unfortunately, do the Welsches demonstrate the simplicity of expression that they so admire in Cather's writing. Readers are likely to be left with their curiosity and appetites unsatisfied. (May 11)