Vineyard Recipes, by The Delta Alpha Class of the First Baptist Church of Vineyard Haven, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts

Vineyard Haven: Falmouth Publishing of Falmouth, Mass, 1920. Octavo (23 x 15.5 cm), 48 pages. Advertisements. Index (actually a table of contents). FIRST EDITION. A community cookbook of two hundred eighty recipes, attributed in many cases to women with surnames still associated with the island's history, such as Downs, Bangs, Tilton, Chadwick, and Merrill. The title page includes the statement, "This class was organized by Mrs. Annie F. Lord in 1912". In evidence is the search for a footing along the continuum of acculturation: Hungarian Goulash, Mexican Rice, Dixie Spoon Bread, Russian Beet Soup, and Portuguese Fluffy Cake jostle for attention among "Old Island Recipes" such as Salt Codfish with Potatoes and Sea Moss Blanc-Mange, not to forget "Gay Head Specialities" from the lighthouse neighborhood, such as Chowder with pork and quahogs. A definitive dating seems elusive. An advertisement for a firm called Issokson's (page 14) places Vineyard Recipes after 1914, while another adjacent on the same page relates to real-estate activity that cannot be verified until the early 1920s. Some confirmation of a terminus post quem may be supplied by the note "Czecho Slovakia" attached to a recipe for Kolache (that is, kolá e), a geographical designation unlikely to have been in general circulation before the close of World War I. Vineyard Haven is the main port of entry to Martha's Vineyard, a neighborhood within the town of Tisbury. The First Baptist Church was established in 1837, its congregation still active, meeting in its "new" building - dedicated in 1885 - at the corner of Spring and Williams Streets. A little interior staining and several corrections to recipes in pencil. In stapled, black-decorated, teal blue wrapper, with an image of three sailboats in profile, with full spinnakers; some staining to wrappers, and two pencil eraser size chips from rear panel. Near very good. Unrecorded. [No copies reported in OCLC; not in Brown or Cagle].