Della Lutes
If a way to a man's heart is said to be through his stomach, culinary history has become a way through which historians seek to understand popular culture. Della Lutes is among Michigan's best selling authors of cookbooks. The Country Kitchen was based on Lutes' immensely popular columns in the Atlantic Monthly. It was first published to wide acclaim in 1936.
Lutes' work sold well because she combined recipes with a nostalgic look at nineteenth century rural Michigan society. Her characters were "country-folks." Finally, scattered throughout the text are wonderful examples of regional cuisine. It is this mixture of childhood memories from Jackson, Michigan and her family recipes that made this book so poignant as well as so popular in its day.
The Country Kitchen, as well as other material created by Della Lutes today rests comfortably on the library's shelves next to the Maureen Hathaway Culinary Archive, a collection of over 2,000 Michigan cookbooks.