A Recipe for Success

Charities raise money — and keep cultural traditions alive — by producing cookbooks

When Ginger Mayerson heard that an earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale had hit Pakistan in October 2005, she immediately wanted to help.

Ms. Mayerson, a writer and blogger who lives in Los Angeles, knew that aid workers from her favorite charity, Doctors Without Borders, would be at work in Pakistan, ministering to the wounded. But she says she was financially “tapped out” after giving to Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.

So Ms. Mayerson did what she could: She turned to fellow blog writers she admired — and, in many cases, didn’t know — and solicited recipes online for a cookbook that would benefit the medical-aid organization.

Although Ms. Mayerson didn’t contribute any recipes herself — she says her culinary philosophy is “shake it out of the box and eat it” — she spent hours compiling and editing the recipes that poured in from others. The self-published result, And They Cook, Too, which was published in March 2006, has sold a modest number of copies and raised just $400 for Doctors Without Borders, but Ms. Mayerson says the cookbook has been well worth the effort.

“I knew they could write, so when they wrote about food it was like literature,” she says. “It’s a good cause, good food, and good writing — what could be better?”

Despite its origins in cyberspace, Ms. Mayerson’s charity effort is part of a tradition that dates back to the Civil War, when women in Philadelphia and elsewhere sold a cookbook to benefit Union hospitals. The countless collections published since then have not only raised millions of dollars for charity, but also evoke the times and places in which they were compiled.

The recipes have changed over the years, combining newly popularized ingredients and terms with an awareness that even the most fervent cooks have responsibilities outside the kitchen that call for streamlined preparations.

And the cookbooks themselves have evolved into a genre that includes both photocopied editions that sell at church picnics for several dollars and sophisticated tomes laden with mouthwatering photographs that sell on Amazon.com for far more.

But whatever the format, the popularity of all types of charity cookbooks shows no signs of waning, demonstrating that recipes shared by others provide not only sustenance but also a sense of community and collective action.

Celebrity Cooks

Longtime friends Jackie Zabel and Morgan Most recently compiled one of the more ambitious efforts, pursuing their idea to “take the community cookbook and put it on steroids,” benefiting not just one but 20 charities. Ms. Zabel, a screenwriter and producer, and Ms. Most, a former actress, say it was easy to find good-hearted celebrities to contribute to The Hollywood Cookbook: Cooking for Causes, which hit bookstores in November.

“Morgan is a fabulous cook,” says Ms. Zabel, “and I’m the type of person that if you give me a cup of coffee, I’ll call anyone. So we put our skill sets together.”

Maurice Lacroix, the Swiss-based watch manufacturer, paid for the cookbook’s design and layout costs, and Ms. Zabel says that photographers, food stylists, and other technical contributors gave their time or worked at greatly reduced rates.

Each of the 20 celebrities selected a charity that was a personal favorite and then contributed an entire menu. For instance, Greg Grunberg, who stars in the NBC series Heroes, has a son with epilepsy and chose the Pediatric Epilepsy Project at UCLA as his beneficiary. Mr. Grunberg’s “Cinco de Mayo” menu includes recipes for a “Mo’Betta Mojito,” tamale pie, flan, and his special guacamole with its secret ingredient, brown sugar.

Ms. Zabel and Ms. Most set up a fund at the Entertainment Industry Foundation that handles the logistics of distributing $5 from the cover price of each book, which retails for $35, among the 20 charities. (The book is in its first printing of 10,000 copies, and the authors say it’s too early to tally how many books have been sold.)

And while some of the charities are well known, such as Save the Children, the authors say it’s been gratifying to help shine the spotlight on smaller charities that have little or no marketing budget. In one example, Anne Hathaway, who starred in the Princess Diaries films and The Devil Wears Prada, chose the Lollipop Theater Network, in New York, which brings films to children who are hospitalized with chronic or life-threatening illnesses.

When asked to name a favorite recipe, Ms. Most is diplomatic, but says that the chefs at the Kitchen Academy, a culinary school in Hollywood, who tested each recipe, were particularly enamored of the actor Brendan Fraser’s eggplant and cheese sandwiches.

Says Ms. Zabel: “Our pitch was: You don’t have to get a limo, you don’t have to get dressed up in an evening gown, you can do this in your pajamas.”

American Tradition

But while charity cookbooks written by celebrities may attract much of the limelight, the vast majority are the result of collective efforts by more anonymous Americans.

Barbara Haber, a food writer and former curator of books at Harvard’s Schlesinger Library, says that charity cookbooks “are a uniquely American tradition” that speak volumes about many social issues, including immigration, nutrition, and the changing role of women.

Long before the advent of cookbooks written by celebrities or famous chefs, charity-organized compilations served as staples in many American kitchens. In addition to recipes, many offered advice to new brides on how to run a household.

Says Ms. Haber: “Older charity cookbooks were published at a time when women were expected to take care of the home, they were the moral centers of their families, and they often have little verses that tell you this — that unless you cook well, and keep a tidy house, your husband will wind up in a poolhall.”

One early example, the Settlement Cookbook, began as a fund-raising tool for the Jewish Settlement House, in Milwaukee, in 1901, a time when German and Eastern European immigrants were streaming into the city. Its initial printing of 1,000 copies quickly sold out and it was reprinted in various updated versions until 1997, ultimately selling more than two million copies and benefiting Milwaukee-area charities for more than 75 years.

The original cookbook was subtitled “The Way to a Man’s Heart,” with the author’s name given as Mrs. Simon Kander. The book stemmed from the classes Lizzie Kander taught at the settlement house to newly arrived immigrant women, showing them how to cook both high-brow American dishes such as lobster Newburg and orange frappe, as well as more humble fare such as corn muffins and chicken broth. But the cookbook also contains recipes for goulash, kugel, and other dishes that reflected the assimilation of the immigrants’ Jewish and European cookery into what was considered American fare. It also explained how to properly measure ingredients, set the table, serve guests, build a fire, and dust a room (“begin in one corner and take each article in turn as you come to it”).

Junior Leagues

While many cooks in the first half of the 20th century relied heavily on the Settlement Cookbook, collections produced by Junior League affiliates have been fixtures in many kitchens since 1943, when the Junior League of Minneapolis printed the first, raising $3,000 for local charities.

Over the years, as the number of affiliates has grown to 293 in four countries — the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the United Kingdom — Junior League chapters have produced hundreds of books that have raised millions of dollars for charity.

Some affiliates don’t create cookbooks, says Sandi Kemmish, president of the Association of Junior Leagues International, while others have printed several. The Junior League of Tampa, in Florida, for instance, has a series of books that since 2002 has netted $300,000 for its charitable activities.

Ms. Kemmish says that over the past two decades Junior League recipes have tended to include fewer ready-made ingredients, focusing instead on fresh, seasonal ingredients, as well as low-fat preparations.

And the number of people who collect Junior League cookbooks of all vintages has become a “phenomenon,” she says, citing one friend who has nearly 800 in her collection. “When I get a new cookbook, I’ll e-mail her and ask her what the good recipes are,” says Ms. Kemmish. “I just want someone to tell me, so I go straight to the source.”

Ms. Kemmish says that members have become increasingly savvy when it comes to marketing their cookbooks, using the Internet, the advertising resources of publishing companies, and sheer ingenuity. One chapter, in Bristol, Tenn., took advantage of the large local Nascar racetrack, culling recipes from top Nascar drivers for its cookbook, Start Your Ovens, which it sells at the speedway. And in 1999 the Boca Raton, Fla., chapter’s Savor the Moment became the first Junior League title available on CD-ROM.

“That’s one of the best parts about Junior League cookbooks, that they talk about charitable projects and also weave in the community,” says Ms. Kemmish. “Some of the cookbooks have gone through as many as 20 printings, and to have that kind of popularity is pretty amazing.”

Competing for Prizes

Ms. Haber, the food historian, says that the range of charities benefiting from such cookbooks has been huge, encompassing social causes that reflect both the eclectic interests and the geographic locales of the associations of women — and increasingly men — who contribute to them.

For example, in 1977 a group called Gourmet Friends of the Farmworkers, in Stanford, Calif., published Cesar Salads, a cookbook in support of activist César Chávez and the United Farm Workers of America, who were on strike in California. Fittingly, all the salad recipes omitted grapes and lettuce, which the union was then asking Americans to boycott in hopes of forcing growers to pay farm workers higher wages.

And in Alaska, the Kodiak Fishermen’s Wives Auxiliary, a nonprofit organization, has published two cookbooks designed to promote the state’s fishing industry and showcase seafood recipes.

Winners of the Tabasco Community Cookbook Awards also display this diversity; each year the awards, sponsored by the McIlhenny Company, in Avery Island, La., honor cookbooks produced by nonprofit organizations based on layout and design, title, theme, recipe content, fund-raising efforts, and how well the cookbook includes local culinary traditions.

This year’s top winner was Saffron to Sassafras, a cookbook published by the Sharing Shores Indian Women’s Association in Baton Rouge, La., that combines staples of Indian cuisine such as tandoori chicken with recipes enlivened by Cajun spices. The proceeds from the cookbook benefit a local shelter for battered women and other Baton Rouge charities that aid needy women and children.

More than 300 volunteers helped produce the second-place winner, Square Table, a fund-raising project for the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council, in Oxford, Miss. The cookbook presents recipes for cheese grits, Brunswick stew, and other Southern specialties alongside quotations from William Faulkner, chapter introductions by John Grisham and other local authors, and several art works and photographs of local landmarks.

Some 350 miles to the south, residents of New Orleans are struggling to regain the culinary legacies that were such an integral part of the city’s life.

Amy Cyrex Sins, a writer and a pharmaceutical-sales representative, grew up about an hour outside New Orleans, but spent every weekend as a child at her grandparents’ house in the city. She’s been a resident of New Orleans since attending Loyola University several years ago, and lived a mere 10 houses away from the 17th Street Canal levee break that sent floodwaters gushing not only into her own home but also into those of her relatives.

All told, her family lost eight houses, says Ms. Sins, so “it wasn’t like I could call my mother-in-law or an aunt and say, could I have that recipe for such-and-such, because they were gone.”

Says Ms. Sins: “In New Orleans and really all of south Louisiana, every major event in your life revolves around food — those Sunday dinners at your grandparents, the birthdays, the graduations, you remember the menus.”

When most of her extensive recipe collection was destroyed in the floods, it dawned on her that many local cooks were facing the same cultural loss.

Ms. Sins began work almost immediately after the disaster, using her “nervous energy” to collect recipes from local cooks and restaurants, including the hole-in-the-wall deli that made her favorite roast-beef po’boy sandwiches. “My goal was that every recipe I would ever want would be in one book and I could evacuate with that book next time.”

She says that she sought recipes from far and wide: “There are people who identify themselves as ‘I make the best spinach madeleine’ or ‘I make the best gumbo,’ and that’s their identity,” says Ms. Sins. “And if people feel passionately enough to give you a recipe, it’s probably really good.”

Meanwhile Ms. Sins had trouble finding a publisher for the cookbook she envisioned — “the publishing companies couldn’t comprehend that I didn’t have mail service or a permanent address,” she says. So she decided to publish it herself, taking out a loan and enlisting the help of her sister, Aaron Cyrex, who designed the cover, and a friend, Tate Tullier, who took many of the photographs.

The three rushed to complete the effort, and the first copies of the Ruby Slippers Cookbook: Life, Culture, Family, and Food After Katrina arrived on August 29, 2006, the one-year anniversary of the disaster.

Says Ms. Sins: “When I was watching it all unfold on the television, I just wanted to click my heels and wake from the dream. Now I just want to be back home, the old way or the new way, and I can’t imagine life without New Orleans, and that’s how the title came about.”

She says that she was nervous about placing an initial order of 4,000 copies, but that those sold almost immediately, and she had to rush a second order in November that was sold out by Christmas.

Part of the book’s proceeds benefit the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, in Baton Rouge, and Ms. Sins so far has given the group $10,000 and says she hopes to ultimately give at least 10 percent of the proceeds to the coalition.

The money has already gone to help replant City Park lagoon, which is linked to the Gulf of Mexico through a series of waterways and bayous. Ms. Sins says that raising awareness about coastal restoration is very important to her, and she is amazed by how many people have approached her at events and asked how they can volunteer for the coalition.

But when asked if she’ll write another cookbook, Ms. Sins says she’d only consider it if she can give herself far more time than she did with Ruby Slippers. “Right now,” she says laughingly, “I think I’m a one-hit wonder.”