'Pie for a doubting husband': how to cook like a suffragette

From Jack London’s method for roasting a “blood-rare” slice of “toothsome teal” to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s accidental discovery of a mysterious treat she calls “synthetic quince”, modern cooks can now take a step back in time with the reissue of a 103-year-old cookbook compiled to raise funds for the suffragettes.

First published in 1915 by The Equal Franchise Federation Of Western Pennsylvania, with a cover showing Uncle Sam weighing men and women on his scales, The Suffrage Cook Book was assembled by a Mrs LO Kleber. Including recipes for a “Pie for a Suffragist’s Doubting Husband” to a “Suffrage Angel Cake”, it is being reissued this month as The Original Suffrage Cook Book to mark the centenary of the 1918 Representation of the People Act, which allowed some women and all men the right to vote for the first time in Great Britain and Ireland.

Kleber, a little-known member of the Pittsburgh suffrage society, contacted dozens of the leading women and men who supported the suffrage movement in the UK and US, asking for contributions in order to raise money to support the women’s vote campaign. Along with Gilman, who wrote the classic novella The Yellow Wallpaper, and The Call of the Wild author London, contributors also include the suffragette Lady Constance Lytton; Jane Addams, the second woman to win a Nobel peace prize; and Julia Lathrop, the first woman to head a federal department, the US Children’s Bureau.

“When I looked into what the women contributing recipes had done, I was bowled over,” said publisher Cheryl Robson at Aurora Metro Books. “They were a powerful group of women and I wanted to bring that to people’s attention. I think it can be inspiring for people today – they did manage to get the 19th amendment [allowing women to vote] passed.”

Robson said that Kleber herself was “a bit of a mystery … I could find out very little about her, although she was obviously very well-connected”.

In a letter to Kleber included in the book, London apologises for his delay in responding – “you see, I am out on a long cruise on the bay of San Francisco, and up the rivers of California, and receive my mail only semi-occasionally” – but includes a recipe for “Roast Duck”, sent after consultation with “Mrs London”.

“The only way in the world to serve a canvas-back or a mallard, or a sprig, or even the toothsome teal, is as follows,” writes London. “The plucked bird should be stuffed with a tight handful of plain raw celery and, in a piping oven, roasted variously 8, 9, 10, or even 11 minutes, according to size of bird and heat of oven. The blood-rare breast is carved with the leg and the carcass then thoroughly squeezed in a press. The resultant liquid is seasoned with salt, pepper, lemon and paprika, and poured hot over the meat.”

He adds that “this method of roasting insures the maximum tenderness and flavor in the bird. The longer the wild duck is roasted, the drier and tougher it becomes.”

Gilman, meanwhile, plumps for what she calls “synthetic quince”. She writes: “I put too much water with my rhubarb and had a whole dishful of beautiful pink juice left over, about a quart,” adding some stewed apples and strawberries to create a dish that “looked and tasted exactly like quince”.

Giving Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson a run for their money, the cookbook includes a wide range of soups, salads and casseroles. Drinks also feature, from the “Peppermint Cup” to a wide selection of “Albuminous Beverages” (“When a large amount of nutriment is required the albuminized drinks are valuable. The egg is a fluid food until its albumen is coagulated by heat.”)

With other recipes ranging from “egg and wine” (“Beat the egg. Heat the water and wine together but not boiling; pour on to the egg, stirring constantly; flavour with sugar and nutmeg”), to peanut omelette, via sweet potato souffle and creole balls, Aurora Metro has included a note in its reissue advising readers that the “publishers accept no responsibility for the efficacy or otherwise of the recipes included herein”.

Kleber, however, writes in her foreword to the book that “as it is a serious matter what is put into the human stomach, I feel it incumbent to say that my readers may safely eat everything set down in this book”.

She does add that, while she has tested most of the recipes herself, “it being a human Cook Book there will likely be some errors, but as correcting errors is the chief duty and occupation of Suffrage Women, I shall accept gratefully whatever criticisms these good women may have to offer”.