Malinda Russell, Abby Fisher, and Rufus Estes: Legendary Black Culinarians

This Black History Month, we’re honoring legendary Black figures in the food justice movement. Today we are highlighting Malinda Russell, who has come to be known as the first Black American woman to author and publish a cookbook.

Russell’s legacy is a brick in the foundation of the larger food sovereignty movement, which gives ownership and due recognition to those whose hands built the cultures and foods we know and love – who often were not credited for their work (read on to learn more).

A series of fires in 1866 and 1868 destroyed all but one copy of Russell’s A Domestic Cookbook: Containing a Careful Selection of Useful Receipts for the Kitchen. This remarkable work—and its miraculous survival—stood the test of time to share 265 recipes and stand out as one of the first books to ever credit African American women in the food/culinary art space.

_{There are no known portraits of Malinda Russell, but this scan of her 1866 cookbook remains in the archives at the University of Michigan.}

A Domestic Cookbook contained recipes for dinners, desserts, as well as medicines and household tips gathered over her lifetime. “A Short History of the Book’s Author” begins her book and archives her lived experience as a single mother who worked as a cook, traveling companion, laundress, and nurse.

In a section titled, “Rules and Regulations of the Kitchen,” Russell credits Fanny Steward, another Black woman who taught her how to cook. This one line is a small but significant piece of Russell’s legacy, as many southern white women who authored cookbooks at the time often claimed dishes as their own without crediting, or even mentioning, the enslaved or underpaid cooks who invented or prepared them.

Russell’s recipes were also written with her audience in mind – women who already knew how to cook – leaving many of her surviving recipes sparse, like this one for Green Corn Bread: Three dozen ears of corn grated, one egg, milk, a little salt. No instructions on temperature or time.

Check out this recipe from Nicole Rufus, Assistant Food Editor at the kitchn recreated Russell’s Yeasted Cornmeal Coffee Cake.

_{Photo: Ghazalle Badiozamani; Food Stylist: Micah Morton; Prop Stylist: Gerri Williams (February 27, 2023).}

Malinda Russel’s history finds a place next to two more notable African American cookbook authors—Abby Fisher (c. 1831 – 1915) and Rufus Estes (c. 1857–1939), whose “What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking” and “Good Things to Eat, as suggested by Rufus” respectively document their lives through culinary expression. Russell, Fisher, and Estes’ books are all restored and publicly available in PDF formats online.