Cookbook Club

Cookbook Review: Jubilee

By: Erin Byers Murray

Cook the Book: Jubilee
by Toni Tipton-Martin

When I first got my hands on a copy of Toni Tipton-Martin’s cookbook Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking, in 2019, I teared up. Having met Tipton-Martin (now the editor in chief of Cook’s Country Magazine) and heard her speak about her journey of collecting, researching, and analyzing historical African-American cookbooks for her first book, The Jemima Code, I could feel the weight of decades of energy, passion, and research that Tipton-Martin poured into the pages. Where The Jemima Code reveals the untold stories of Black cooks and authors, Jubilee carries their legacies forward by reclaiming their recipes and repositioning them for modern home cooks. 

With Jubilee, Tipton-Martin writes that she, “tried to honor the kind of joyous cooking that would have turned yesterday’s enslaved and free cooks into today’s celebrity chefs with glittering reputations grounded in restaurant fare and cookbook publishing.” These recipes show that refined cooking fulfilled lives and sustained African-American communities—they “break the soul code,” as she writes. 

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Date Published: 06.09.22
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About The Author

Erin Byers Murray

Erin Byers Murray has been digging into stories about food and wine for more than twenty years. Based in Nashville, she is the editor-in-chief of The Local Palate and has authored or co-authored half a dozen books, including deep dives into oysters and grits, as well as several cookbooks. Her work has been published in multiple publications, including Food & Wine, Wine & Spirits, the Boston Globe, and three editions of Best Food Writing.

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