Kitchen Wisdom from Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

For The Yearling author, cooking was more relaxing than writing

In today’s Literary Ladies Lite edition, we’ll meet Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings in her kitchen, located in the orange groves of midcentury Florida (the site is now a historic state park dedicated to her life and work). There she found cooking to be a pleasing (and easier) creative outlet than writing.

It turns out that a number of classic authors enjoyed cooking. Maya Angelou wrote a cookbook; so did Pearl S. Buck. Willa Cather enjoyed her time in the kitchen when she wasn’t writing her Great American Novels.

Best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Yearling and her memoir, Cross Creek, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings found cooking to be a joy. In contrast, she belonged to the “writing is agony” camp when it came to creating her stories and novels.

Rawlings collected her recipes in Cross Creek Cookery (1942). For the most part, the dishes are familiar, with a decidedly Southern accent. Still workable if not always healthful (lots of butter and sugar), some of the dishes would now be considered extreme — Alligator-Tail Steak and Minorcan Gopher Stew among them.

As many of you know, in addition to being a literature nerd, I’m also a vegan cookbook author (my other Substack is The Vegan Atlas), so I’ve taken the liberty of linking to contemporary interpretations of some of the recipes and ingredients Rawlings references in these quotes.

This is a rare occasion for sharing recipes in the Literary Ladies newsletter, so I hope you enjoy them!

. . . . . . . . .

“Soup comes into its own, poor-man stye, as a main course. One small serving of a ravishing soup is infuriating. It is like seeing the Pearly Gates being shut in one’s face after one brief glimpse of Heaven.”

Rawlings includes “Chef Huston’s Cream of Peanut Soup” in her soups chapter. My interpretation of peanut soup, which holds a prominent place in Southern cuisine, is Vegan Peanut Soup with Broccoli and Apple. It’s one of my favorites, especially in the fall.