Food That Really Schmecks: Mennonite Country Cooking.

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

When it was published in 1968, Staebler’s exploration of Mennonite cooking became an instant classic. With over 700 recipes it is definitely a hefty cookbook, but its re-issue as a commemorative edition will likely draw as many fans from the disciplines of folk literature and sociology as from the culinary field.

Staebler, the author of more than 20 books and numerous articles published in Canada’s top magazines, approached the challenge of writing a Mennonite cookbook as she would any other journalism assignment—with extensive in-person research. Through time spent among the Old Order plain folk in the Kitchener-Waterloo area of Ontario, mainly in Mennonite kitchens, she was able to gather recipes and report on an approach to food characterized by thrift and simplicity, with results that are both plentiful and appetizing. The recipes use home-grown products to produce meals that are hearty and filling, with no waste. As a cookbook, today, there are weaknesses. Sometimes the method is vague. Sometimes the list of ingredients is incomplete. Quantities may be a problem: one sausage recipe calls for 99 pounds of meat. Measurements are strictly imperial or folk (“butter size of an egg”). None of that matters because Staebler gives the reader something far more valuable—the hands-on feel for producing mouth-watering meals that respect the land and honour family and friends. The anecdotal approach and conversational tone is enhanced by the judicious use of Pennsylvania Deutsch/Mennonite German phrases, such as “eat till it’s all.”

The recipes are quite useable today by experienced cooks who can cope with the occasional quaint or ingenuous instruction such as “put … in the oven, go to church … hope the preacher doesn’t keep you longer than 1 ½ hours.” The selection includes Mennonite dishes such as shoofly pie, funeral pie, pigs feet, fat sparrows, potato candy, somersault pie, thick milk pie, baked cucumbers, and stuffed heart. Other recipes recall a Victorian past: beef tea, raspberry vinegar, milk toast, black currant cordial. Still others suggest a humble country heritage: fried oatmeal porridge, dried corn, onion pie, chicken with dumplings, baked squash, tomato butter. The massive collection includes beverages, salads, main dishes, baked goods, and desserts. From the Ontario farm kitchen perspective, there’s a recipe for “anything that needs eating.”

Whether viewed as a cookbook or a sociological portrait of a unique culture, it is a joy to read and an invitation to culinary diversity.