Chicamacomico Cookery, Volume Two, Facsimile Edition

A two-volume charity cookbook like this is a rarity.

The best guess is that there have been "hundreds of thousands" of community and charity cookbooks (CCBs in the parlance of historians who study them) published in the United States since the first one -- The Poetical Cookbook -- in 1864. Since they have been small, local efforts in practically every town and hamlet in the U.S. for 150 years, nobody has really collected them all or counted them. Some, no doubt, have had multiple printings, but an entirely new edition, with a changed set of recipes would be hard to find.

Chicamacomico Cookery, Volume Two, is a phenomenon for more than its "rare sequel" status. It documents local history and the people who made that history. It was published by volunteers in the Chicamacomico Banks Volunteer Fire Department Ladies Auxiliary about 10 years after an earlier group put together Volume One. Only seven contributors to Volume One (1970-1973) were listed among the 84 contributors to Volume Two (1980-1983).

Volume One seemed to contain largely local recipes - many for the fish and shellfish that were caught locally. In Volume Two, though, the recipes that the Outer Banks cooks submitted included many from outside sources -- different regions and places on the Earth far from "the Banks."

Also, the women who contributed to Volume Two were more inclined to use their own names rather than "Mrs." and their husband's name as they did in Volume One. The Banks clearly had seen the effects of the women's movement of that era.

The two volumes are full of recipes that obviously were important to families in a tiny community, on a historic barrier island, in one of the most storm-swept places in the United States. They are unique and they deserve to be preserved.

We hope that these facsimile editions will help keep alive the memories of the people and the recipes and a little bit of the history of Waves, Rodanthe and Salvo, North Carolina - a place that was once called Chicamacomico.