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For pretty much as long as I have been alive, my mother has said that her idea of the perfect career is one where she would be paid to read books all day long. Off the top of my head I can think of three jobs that involve the reading of books, but unfortunately my mom's desires are very specific. She does not want to write book reviews. She does not want to write readers' reviews of the manuscripts in the slushpile of our nation's increasingly-consolidated publishing houses. She does not want to immerse herself in the paperwork that accompanies library work. What she wants is to receive her books, read them, and then get the paycheck. I agree with her that this would be a delightful job situation, and that it's a shame that no one has offered it to her.

It would appear that I am my mother's daughter after all, because I have decided that my perfect job is one that requires me to visit the Rose Reading Room at the New York Public Library and do research on the history of the use of eggs in baking. Of course, I'll take it a step further: I'll be glad to write a book based on all this research, but unless that book becomes a wildfire runaway best-seller, it probably won't pay for my research time. "Can you think of any kind of work that would enable you to be at the library?" asks Friendly Neighborhood Mental Health Professional. Well, sure I can, but it all involves something else: going to grad school, paying for grad school, teaching core curriculum history classes to nervy young adults who are required to take your class in order to graduate, who want to be anywhere but your class, and whose bodies sing with the potential energy that will bolt them out the door, kinetically, once your hour with them is up. I just want to go to the library and read.

"Why don't you do research for corporations?" asks a sweet and well-meaning friend. "Why don't you get Arkansas-Based Chicken Company or Maryland-Based Chicken Company to underwrite your study?" Poor dear Sweet and Well-Meaning, she has not yet been subjected to my various noisy thunderings about ABCC or MBCC yet. Nope, for now I'm sticking to my guns, although I will admit that every time I walk into the Rose Reading Room and take in the table after table of furrowed-browed readers, the brilliant paintings on the ceiling and the big board under which people sit, waiting for their call-slip numbers to come up, indicating that their books are ready, I wonder if there is such a thing as being too scrupulous. I wonder if filthy lucre would really be so filthy if it pays for access to such a heady, elevating space. Those of you who are fans of Angel would recognize this as the moment that Wolfram & Hart would be moving in for the kill, and I would be lighter by one immortal soul.

So it is that for now I stick to my imperfect but still-happy regimen of heading to the library every Saturday, plus any weeknight I can manage to get there, and reading old cookbooks, old trade journals, and, in one fairly exciting moment (well, exciting if you are a food-ephemera nerd like myself), a history of baking in Massachusetts, published in 1909, commissioned by a trade association and written by what could kindly be called an apologist for the industry. (As my hero Mrs. Karen Hess might say, anyone who says that dried eggs and Fleischmann's yeast are superior to shell eggs and natural yeasts simply cannot be trusted. The book is still worth reading, though, if for no other reason than that the author describes his contemporary Sylvester Graham as employing the logic of "the child and the savage" in his opposition to white flour. Holy smokes.) I have also been given the great privilege of a six-month pass, renewable upon expiration, to the Rare Books and Manuscripts Room, which is so amazing that it really deserves a post all its own.

By now you might be wondering what any of this has to do with Valentine's Day. On yesterday's trip to the library, I found a cookbook published by the Milford Chronicle Publishing Company of Milford, Delaware in 1921, titled The Blue Hen's Chicken's Cook Book: Containing a Number of Long Used Recipes, Embracing All Popular Dishes and a Variety of Miscellaneous Recipes of More than Special Value to Housekeepers. I had requested this book because the catalog description indicated that the recipes were created by housewives living in the Del*mar*va peninsula. Since the Del*mar*va (for Delaware, Maryland and Virginia) peninsula was a center of chicken farming in the 20th century, I thought it might be useful to my research. Indeed it was, but not for the reasons I anticipated. I never fail to be surprised by the subtle infantilizing tone in many "community" cookbooks like this. Maybe there were readers out there who enjoyed the little bits of doggerel masquerading as poetry in the chapter headers and on the title page, but I can't imagine anyone over the age of 9 or 10 actually liking those little poems; certainly I can't imagine how those little poems added to women's experience in the kitchen. Then I hit pay dirt, in the form of this little prose piece, attributed to "Juliette [sic] Corson, New York Cooking School"*:

A good many husbands are utterly spoiled by mismanagement. Some women go about it as if their husbands were bladders, and proceed to blow them up. Others keep them constantly in hot water. Others let them freeze by carelessness and indifference. Some keep them in a stew by irritating ways and words. Others roast them. Some keep them in a pickle all their lives. It cannot be supposed that any husband will be tender and good, managed in this way; but they are really delicious when properly treated. In selecting your husband, you should not be guided by the silvery appearance, as in buying mackerel, nor by the golden tint, as if you wanted salmon. Be sure and select him yourself, as tastes differ. Do not go to market for him, as the best are always brought to your door. It is far better to have none, unless you will patiently learn to cook him. A preserving kettle of the finest porcelain is best, but if you have nothing but an earthenware jar, it will do, with care. See that the linen in which you wrap him is nicely washed and mended, with the required number of buttons and strings nicely sewed on. Tie him in the kettle by a strong silk cord, called "comfort," as the one called "duty" is apt to be weak. They are apt to fly out of the kettle and be burned and crusty on the edges, since, like crabs and lobsters, you have to cook them while alive. Make a clear, steady fire of love, neatness and cheerfulness. Set him as near this as seems to agree with him. If he sputters and fizzes, do not be anxious; some husbands do this until they are quite done. Add a little sugar, in the form of what confectioners call kisses, but no vinegar and pepper, on any account. A little spice improves them, but is [sic] must be used with judgment. Do not stick any sharp instrument into him, to see if he is becoming tender. Stir him gently; watch the while lest he lie too flat and close to the kettle, and so become useless. You cannot fail to know when he is done. If thus treated you will find him very delicious, agreeing nicely with you and the children, and he will keep as long as you want, unless you become careless and set him in too cold a place.

Dear friends, I don't know where to begin, how to discuss this. I don't know what is creepier: the cooking metaphors (because really, if you are contemplating your husband sputtering and fizzing and getting burned and crusty on the edges, you may have deeper issues than you realize); the idea that men are really only made good by the gentle and not-so-gentle manipulations of women; the equally pernicious idea that women only get the best from men when they are sweet-tempered and cheerful ("no vinegar and pepper, on any account"? beg pardon?); or the execution of all of these ideas in such a precious, simpering tone. One of my problems with the feminist movement in the latter half of the 20th century -- and I say this as someone who is proud to be a feminist, who does not play the "well, I believe in equal pay, but I'm not one of those *feminists*!" games, because I *am* one of those feminists -- was that in their desire to cast off the shackles of stifling gender role stereotyping, one taproot of thought within the movement reclassified home cookery as a burden, and an outmoded relic of a less-enlightened time, rather than an art, a craft, and a showcase for real accomplishment. I always found this sad, this rejection of one of the most glorious facets of our history, but now that I have read the Juliet Corson piece, I am not surprised. If you associate cooking with being treated like a bit of a simpleton, and with being told to just be nicer to that man of yours, and you are a smart and vaguely unfulfilled woman, would it be any wonder if you just said "the hell with this!" and turned your back on it all?

*Even as I take issue with Juliet Corson's piece here, I recognize that she was a smart and complex woman. She was one of the most popular and influential culinary personalities of the late 19th century, the Julia Child of her day, but, like Julia, she went from not being able to cook at all to opening a school and teaching other women to cook in less than three years. (This says less about Miss Corson's skill as a cook, and more about our veneration of "instant expertise" at the expense of rigorous, time-consuming training and practice; this tendency reached its apotheosis in Fannie Farmer, who graduated from the Boston Cooking School, began teaching at the school immediately upon graduation, and became the head of the school in less than five years.) Nevertheless, Miss Corson was bright and driven, and spent years teaching cookery to working-poor families. She left a legacy of public service, and both her public work and the details of her private life point to a woman much more multifaceted than "How to Cook a Husband" would indicate.