Cook book (Relief Society, Houston, 1963)

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This is a 1963 community cookbook compiled by the Relief Society of the Maplewood Ward (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) in Houston, Texas, with artwork credited to Joanne Hardy. Like many mid-century church and club cookbooks, it is a collective work assembled from members' contributed recipes rather than the product of a single professional author. The book moves through relishes, pickles, and appetizers; soups, salads, and beverages; candies and sauces; a large dessert and cake section; cookies, pies, and breads; vegetables and main dishes; and closes with humorous household verse and practical time-saving tips. With 256 anchored food records, it captures a broad cross-section of home cooking current in early 1960s Texas Latter-day Saints households, blending scratch techniques (yeast breads, candy at specific sugar stages) with contemporary convenience products like cake mixes and Dream Whip. Readers today will find it valuable both as a culinary snapshot and as a piece of local congregational history, complete with named contributors and personal touches such as 'Recipe for a Home' and 'How to Cook a Husband.' It is best approached as a working kitchen reference of its era rather than a polished literary cookbook.

The book is organized into numbered sections (Roman numerals appear in the summaries, such as Section I, Section VI, Section VII, Section VIII, and Section IX) that group recipes by course and type: relishes/pickles/appetizers, soups/salads/beverages, candies/sauces, desserts/cakes, cookies/pies/breads, vegetables, main dishes, and a closing miscellany of household tips and humor. Within these, subheadings mark specific categories (RELISHES, PICKLES, APPETIZERS, PIES, BREAD, VEGETABLES, MAIN DISHES, TIME SAVERS). The synthetic section divisions used here (sections 1 through 5) do not align one-to-one with the book's internal Roman-numeral sections but sweep across them as continuous page ranges.