Cooking in Crisis: Everyday Heroism in Blanche Armwood Perkins’s Cookbook Food Conservation in the Home

Abstract: This article examines everyday heroism in Blanche Armwood Perkins’s cookbook Food Conservation in the Home (1918) through the lens of food history. Centering on the role of eating and cooking for US society during World War I, it argues that the cookbook constructed homemakers as everyday heroines by using food as a means to implement the heroic into daily American life. Armwood Perkins’s cookbook represents a rare voice of an African American woman in American wartime food literature. Analyzing this source in its historical context, I explore two correlated aspects. First, I show how the cookbook heroized women’s work in the kitchen by stressing their role as nurturers of a nation within the confines of the home. Second, I consider the cookbook as part of African American foodways, demonstrating how Armwood Perkins challenged stereotypical representations of African American women. Everyday heroism served as a strategy to mobilize civilians and strengthen women’s national allegiance in domestic spaces, thereby reinforcing ‘traditional’ gender norms. Ultimately, this article expands understandings of everyday heroism by revealing how seemingly trivial acts like cooking and eating could be considered heroic.

In April 1918, African American educator Blanche Armwood Perkins underscored the importance of saving food during wartime, writing in her cookbook: “Every pound of white flour saved is equal to a bullet in our Nation’s defense” (5). Stressing the “urgent need for food thrift,” she called upon American households to change their cooking routines and eating habits to support the nation’s efforts during World War I (4). In about 145 different recipes, Food Conservation in the Home instructed its audience of “housewives and cooks” (5) to economize on valuable resources such as “[w]heat, [m]eats, [s]ugar and [f]ats” (4) and integrate these dietary changes into their everyday lives. Between the lines of recipes like “‘War’ Breads” (8) and “Victory Potato Salad” (32), her cookbook glorified the patriotic duty of every American homemaker to serve their country. To the women reading her cookbook, she gave a subtle but powerful promise that every one of them could become an everyday heroine simply by conserving food.