Recipe Jubilee. Published by The Junior League of Mobile, Inc. 1964

Mobile, Alabama: Southern Lithographing, 1975. Octavo (344 pages. Table of contents and index. Illustrated. Sixth printing. A tribute to the tradition; an attractively illustrated charitable cookbook of nearly one thousand attributed recipes, many of which bear close resemblance to entries in church and charitable cookbooks of prior generations: Cheese Straws, Oyster Pie, Shrimp Jambalaya, Tenessee Ham, Turnip Greens, Buckwheat Cakes, Pecan Tarts, Grasshopper Pie, Cranberry Ice. Against these must be weighed a trove of relative novelties, including Avocado Soup, Liptauer Cheese, Crabmeat Croustades, Sherried Chicken, Hominy Pie, Apricot Loaf, Baked Grapefruit. The sharing of recipes presumes a shared interest in preparing meals. Thousands of community cookbooks still animate the truism that, however singular the sensate experience of eating, all cooking is social. Among them, a number warrant regard for their production by organizations that exist specifically to promote the ideal of volunteerism that set the tradition itself in motion. In that The Junior League of Mobile works "to develop the potential of its members for voluntary participation in community affairs," Recipe Jubilee amounts to volunteerism in the service of volunteerism. A thoroughly successful effort at that: there were thirteen printings by 2002, and a total of one hundred sixty thousand copies sold. In publisher's green and white decorated cloth, slightly bumped and sunfaded, otherwise near fine.