Sook's Cookbook brims with delicious, uniquely southern recipes
such as green olive jambalaya, watermelon rind preserves, and
poinsettia cake, as well as classic buttermilk biscuits and lemon
meringue pie. Marie Rudisill first began working on Sook's Cookbook
with her nephew, Truman Capote, in the late 1940s to pay tribute to
her charming, eccentric aunt, Sook Faulk. After putting the project
aside for many years, Rudisill developed the book's methodology on
her own: using nineteenth-century plantation daybooks for
inspiration, she paired recipes with profiles of family and
community cooks.
In these pages, you'll meet Sook -- made famous in Capote's
story, "A Christmas Memory" -- with her kitchen windowsill herb
garden (complete with two pet chameleons to ward off bugs) and her
penchant for cooking on her big, black woodstove year-round -- even
on the hottest summer days. Recipes for tea sugar cookies and
lemon-and-parsley butter tea sandwiches follow the profile of
Marie's aunt Jenny, who ran the Faulk household, as well as her own
renowned hat and accessory shop. Rudisill also spotlights
often-overlooked cooks -- Little Bit, the official house cook, and
Corrie Wolff, a housekeeper and occasional cook, whose recipes
feature the Cajun and Creole flavors of Louisiana, as well as Sem,
who prepared special food for parties, weddings, and funerals.
In his foreword, Gourmet contributing editor John T. Edge calls
Sook's Cookbook -- first published in 1989 -- "one of the most
compelling regional cookbooks of the latter half of the twentieth
century." He also celebrates Marie Rudisill's character and spirit
-- from her sassy appearances on the Tonight Show, where she became
known as the Fruitcake Lady, to her deep appreciation of the people
and the old southern ways she knew and loved in Monroeville,
Alabama. Much more than a cookbook, these pages pay homage to a
small town in the Deep South and the intriguing people who made it
come alive.
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