cc  >> Welcome to the Wisconsin  Historical Museum, I'd like to  introduce our speaker today.  His name is Bob Kann, and he's  the author of "A Recipe for  Success: Lizzie Kander and her  Cookbook."  And with that, I'd like to  have him tell you a little bit  more about that.  Thank you.  (applause)  >> Bob Kann: Thank you.  Good afternoon.  >> Audience: Good afternoon.  >> Bob Kann: You can do better  than that, we're talking about  food today.  Good afternoon!  >> Audience: Good afternoon.  >> Bob Kann: For more than 100  years, this book,  the "Settlement Cookbook,  the Way to a Man's Heart,"  has been a loyal friend  to millions of chefs  around the world.  More than 2 million copies of  this book have been sold. 

 34 editions have been printed,  this is the most successful  fundraising cookbook in history.  It was written and collected by  this woman here, Lizzie Kander,  and I'm Bob Kann, and I wrote a  biography of Lizzie Kander for  the historical society's Badger  Biographies series, a marvelous,  marvelous series of biographies  of people from Wisconsin, aimed  at roughly 4th to 8th graders.  Today what I'd like to share  with you are some stories about  Lizzie and her cookbook.  So, about 1840, Lizzie's  parents, John and Mary Black,  Jewish immigrants from Germany  and England, came to Green Bay.  About four years later they  moved to Milwaukee, the mouth of  the Milwaukee River, and they  opened a dry goods store, kind  of a general goods store.  14 years later their fourth  child, Lizzie, was born.  There are three particularly  important things about Lizzie's  childhood you should know.  One is, she actually worked in  that family store of theirs.  Back in the 1860s, 1870s, it was  very uncommon even for women to  work as sales-ladies in stores,  let alone girls.  But Lizzie's family believed  that she should be connected to  the community in which she  lived. 

 So from a very young age, she  became accustomed to doing  things that girls did not  typically do.  As an adult, she would be doing  this through her entire life.  Second important thing about her  childhood is she was raised in a  Jewish family.  Her parents were the co-founders  of Temple B'ne Jeshurun, which  is in River Hills, Wisconsin  today, operating 150 years  later.  Back then, and today, if you  were raised in a Jewish  household, one of the things you  were taught, it is what's called  "tikkun olam," healing the  world.  It is your responsibility as a  Jewish person to do something to  make the world a better place.  And particularly help those in  the greatest of need.  Lizzie spent 62 years of her  life as an adult and teenager  spending her time helping people  in need.  Mostly European and Russian  Jewish immigrants who came to  Milwaukee.  Third important thing to know  about Lizzie was that her family  were German Jewish immigrants,  they came in that kind of first  wave of German immigrants to  Wisconsin, about the 1840s or  so. 

 And they were very well settled  by the time Lizzie was growing  up in Milwaukee, they had  acculturated very much.  And the German Jewish community  had very ambivalent feelings  about the next wave of  immigrants, the Russian Jewish  immigrants who came later.  On the one hand, they considered  them kind of family members, and  they very much wanted to help  them get settled into life in  America.  On the other hand, they were  very embarrassed by them.  They spoke a different language,  Yiddish, the men had long  beards, they looked very  different.  They were kind of more working  class compared to these kind of  middle class German Jews.  And so on the one hand, the  German Jews like Lizzie's family  wanted to help the new  immigrants.  On the other hand, they wanted  to help them quickly and get  them out of sight so nobody  would actually say they were  Jewish, but also, there were  justifiable fears that  anti-Semitism would rear its  ugly head again, and it hadn't  gone away entirely.  So Lizzie sort of grew up with  this ambivalence and you see it  in her adult life as well.  Her family was a very kind of  traditional middle class Jewish  family and as a girl she was  taught that providing good food,  a clean house, spiritual uplift  and moral enlightenment for  children is the role of a woman,  and that's what she was taught  as a child and eventually as an  adult she would be teaching  young Jewish immigrant women  those very same values. 

 So, what was it like being  Lizzie Kander growing up in  Milwaukee in the 1860s and  1870s?  Well, when she went to school,  if she wanted to get a drink of  water in her class, there was no  bubbler or water fountain that  you could go to.  Back in the 1860s, 1870s, if you  wanted a drink, you would go to  the back of the room where there  would be a big bucket or a big  pail.  There would be a ladle inside of  it.  You would take the ladle, you  and up to, I wrote another book  on the La Follettes, Bob La  Follette had 100 kids in his  class at one point in time not  far from here in Argyle.  You would take the ladle, you  would dip it in the bucket, you  would take a drink, put it back  in so that the next kid could  use it.  Of course, we're all horrified  at this notion now, given what  we know about germs, but they  didn't know about germs in the  1860s and '70s.  So in my book I have a little  sidebar kind of about the  history of germs to kind of  explain to my audience exactly  why it was they did this, what  we now consider to be an  abominable practice.  If you were a kid, unlike Lizzie  who was a very good model  student, if you were sort of a  normal kid who didn't pay  attention or got in trouble, who  misbehaved, who got caught  daydreaming, if your teaching  caught you, you would be forced  to wear a dunce cap.  And you would be forced to stand  in a corner...  like this. 

 Sometimes for hours at a time.  Some kids were embarrassed by  it, some kids very much liked  the attention.  Well, back in 1874, about,  Lizzie graduated from 8th grade  and she was about to go to  Milwaukee's only high school  back then, East High School.  Back in the 1870s, in order to  matriculate and attend high  school, you had to pass an  examination.  And I have yet to meet anybody,  any of my peers, who would not  still be in 8th grade had they  had to take that examination.  They were incredible, what they  expected kids to know back then.  There were 11 areas of mastery  on that exam, including music,  drawing, handwriting.  I'll give you a sample of a  couple of the questions.  Name the river systems of South  America, including the three  principal rivers of each.  Give an account of the voyage of  Sir Francis Drake in 1579. 

 Define the following membranes  and give the function of each:  syrus, simovial, mucus.  Anybody who could answer all  this?  Not me, I'd still be in 8th  grade.  Nonetheless, Lizzie and 99 of  her peers, 100 out of 133 kids  who took the test, actually  passed the test.  I couldn't find the exact test  that Lizzie took, but I found  one sort of within a few years  of the year she took the test so  it was very similar to that.  So Lizzie went on to high  school.  Lizzie lived far enough from the  high school where she went out  to lunch every day.  Now, in what I think is a great  touch of irony, as an adult she  spent her life teaching young  women how to cook nutritious,  healthy meals for their  children.  So, what did Lizzie as a  teenager eat, when she had her  choice for what to have for  lunch?  Pickles, popcorn, and crackers.  1878 Lizzie was elected to be  the valedictorian of her  graduating class, and her  graduation speech gives us a  little window of understanding  into what this, what I think was  very audacious, self-confident  young woman was like back then.  As a 20-year-old in 1878,  Lizzie's graduation speech was  called "When I'm President."  This was 42 years before women  earned the right to vote. 

 This was only six years after  Susan B Anthony had tried to  vote in a presidential election  and she was arrested and fined  $100, and the judge ruled the  judgment for the case before he  even heard it, he was so  anti-feminist.  Lizzie was not at all daunted by  that, to say the least.  So Lizzie graduated from high  school, and her options were  very limited.  It was very rare for a young  woman to go to college back in  the 1870s.  Her family was well-to-do, so  she didn't have to find a job,  so it was pretty much expected  in sort of the middle class  Jewish community of Milwaukee  that Lizzie would do what many  of her peers did, which was do  volunteer work and eventually,  presumably find a husband and  then you'd become a housewife.  So Lizzie volunteered for a new  organization that her temple had  founded called the Ladies Relief  Sewing Society.  And what that was, was around  that time there was a very harsh  winter in Milwaukee and the  eastern European and Russian  immigrants, and other immigrants  were starting to come into  Milwaukee.  Many of them did not have  adequate clothing to deal with  Wisconsin's harsh weather.  So the Ladies Relief Sewing  Society started providing  clothing for the immigrants, as  well as bedding.  This was Lizzie's main volunteer  activity for the next decade or  so. 

 A couple years later she met  Simon Kander, a traveling  salesman, eventually he became a  very wealthy real estate  manager, a businessman, served  in the state legislature,  they got married about 1884.  Never had children, I still  don't why to this day, she loved  children, her nieces and nephews  raved about her.  Might be that she couldn't have  children, might be he couldn't  have children, I was never able  to track down one of those  historical mysteries.  In any case, about 1890, Lizzie  volunteered for a new activity  which changed her life.  Lizzie volunteered to work as a  truant officer.  And she was specifically looking  at, why were many Jewish  children not going to school in  Milwaukee?  Well, for the first time, she  got outside of her kind of  middle class existence and she  really saw poverty in the Jewish  ghetto firsthand.  And I think two things happened  when she went into the homes of  the poor Jewish immigrants.  One was, she was just absolutely  astounded at the conditions that  she saw.  She would see 13 families live  in an apartment that was made  for one family.  She'd see kids who didn't go to  school because they didn't have  clothing warm enough to go  outside in the winter. 

 She'd see other kids, or learn  about kids six, seven years old,  who were working in factories  six days a week, 12 hours a day.  Parents doing the same thing, or  seven days a week, or looking  for jobs.  At the same time she saw all of  these adults, many of whom  didn't speak English that came  here with very little money,  very few marketable skills, and  I think two things happened to  her.  One was she was absolutely  appalled at these conditions and  so part of her immediately  wanted to solve all of their  problems, in part because she  had a very good heart, and in  part because they were an  embarrassment to the German  Jewish community.  The other thing, though, I think  she started to develop this  great sensitivity and  appreciation for the struggles  of these families.  She saw how hard their lives  were, and yet how determined  they were to make better lives  for themselves and their  families.  This is my family's story, my  family came to Chicago, and when  I think about the struggles of  that immigrant generation, I  think, myself and my wife and  now my child, we are reaping the  benefits from the courage of  that generation 100 years ago.  And I think Lizzie kind of  really got it, that these people  were really doing everything in  their power to escape the  horrible life they had back in  wherever they came from, to try  and make a go of it, and she  wanted to help them.  Couple years later, Lizzie  herself was elected to be the  president of the Ladies Relief  Sewing Society, and by now she  had realized that just providing  clothing and bedding was not  enough for all of the needs of  these immigrants.  So she gave $75 of her own  money, which nowadays would be  about $1500, she convinced her  temple to let her use the two  basement rooms of the temple,  and she formed what was called  the Keep Clean Mission. 

 The Keep Clean Mission is  basically the first  organizational manifestation of  what is now the Jewish Community  Center of Milwaukee, it was the  first Jewish community center in  Milwaukee.  The idea behind the name "Keep  Clean" is that the body had to  be clean before the mind could  get accustomed to all of the  changes involved in the new  culture.  There was a two-pronged plan  that Lizzie and her fellow women  from the temple had to try and  help the immigrants.  One was, they wanted to get the  kids.  They wanted to teach the kids  American values, good  citizenship.  So how do you attract kids to  something that's never existed  before?  Games.  They offered games that kids  could play for free that they  couldn't afford at home.  Games like checkers, games like  Parcheesi.  For the adults, they offered  something no adult could resist:  hot water.  Remember, there wasn't indoor  plumbing back then. 

 The temple was located right  near the Schlitz brewery.  They convinced the brewery to  pipe in hot water to create a  bathhouse inside of the Keep  Clean Mission.  And thousands and thousands of  Milwaukeeans for the next decade  or two took their baths and  showers at the community center.  It was a big draw.  Well, as soon as they opened the  Keep Clean Mission, two problems  immediately emerged.  One was, the kids didn't come  there because they wanted to  play games.  The kids knew their families  were fighting for survival.  The kids wanted real marketable  skills that they could use.  Lizzie, much to her credit, and  much to her credit her entire  life, responded to the needs and  desires of the community.  She began offering cooking and  sewing classes for the girls,  woodworking and industrial arts  classes for the boys. 

 Second problem was, the adults  hated the name "Keep Clean  Mission."  They justifiably thought there  was something very patronizing  about these middle class women  saying, someone needs to keep us  clean.  They didn't put it in those  terms, but they got the message  so they changed the name to the  Milwaukee Jewish Mission.  Well, it kept becoming more and  more popular, thousands of  people started coming in, they  started expanding, bursting at  the seams.  By 1900, they needed a new  facility.  Lizzie enlisted the help of  Simon's business cronies.  They pledged $1000 a year for  the community center.  They rented a building near  downtown Milwaukee and they  opened what was called the  Settlement House.  Lizzie was its first president.  Well, they expanded services,  they had Yiddish newspapers,  they had coffee for the peddlers  so they wouldn't go into the  bars.  They had clubs and games for the  kids, more and more people kept  coming in. 

 And immediately, I think, three  problems, seemingly unrelated,  that would ultimately be the  reason why I'm here today,  forged in Lizzie's mind and she  solved them all in one fell  swoop.  Problem number one, she needed  more space.  Very quickly it was quite clear  they were gonna have to move  somewhere, a bigger facility,  they were just too popular.  Second thing, she needed an  independent source of income.  She didn't want to be dependent  on the largesse of Simon and his  friends to be able to make this  enterprise continue, she needed  something else.  The third seemingly-unrelated  problem was Lizzie had been  teaching cooking classes to  young Jewish girls after they  went to their regular school day  or their job.  Typical of what happened would  be that Lizzie would write the  recipe on the chalkboard, the  girls would have their little  notebooks, they would copy the  recipes, they would work on them  in class, and sometimes they  would work on them at home.  Lizzie thought this was very  inefficient, but remember there  weren't copy machines back then.  So Lizzie had this idea.  What if she put together a  fundraising cookbook?  That way, the girls could have  their own cookbook, they  wouldn't have to copy it in  class, and maybe they could make  a little money for the community  center. 

 So Lizzie went to her board of  directors, all men, probably all  men she had recruited to serve  on the board of directors, and  she said, "Will you give me $18  so that I can publish this  fundraising cookbook?"  And they said, "No."  They said, "It's not in our  budget."  But they said, in something  they would come to eat their  words in great force, they said,  "But we'd be glad to share in  any profits from your 'little  venture.'"  Boy, did those guys learn.  Lizzie would never take no for  an answer.  She printed up a mock-up of the  cookbook anyway, she went to a  local printer in Milwaukee, she  said, "Will you print it?"  He said, "I don't know, let me  show it to my wife, Gussie."  Gussie looked at it, she said,  "Print it."  He said, "Okay."  So he did.  He printed it.  He printed 1,000 copies of the  book.  They gave free copies to the  girls in the classes, they sold  the rest for 50 cents a copy at  the Boston Store, a very rare  store that was owned by a  Russian Jewish immigrant in  Milwaukee.  Within one year, they'd sold out  all copies of the cookbook, in  1903 they printed a second  edition, 1,500 copies were  printed, they sold all those  out.  1907, same thing, more copies.  By the time Lizzie died in 1940,  she had edited 22 editions of  the cookbook, eventually 34  editions were printed, and it  became the most successful  fundraising cookbook in history.  So what did that original  cookbook look like?  Well, something like this. 

 It was called the "Settlement  Cookbook, the Way to a Man's  Heart."  Because back then, and sometimes  today, people believed the way  to a man, or nowadays it might  be a woman's heart, is through  their stomach.  The book had 174 pages including  advertisements and it was  divided into two sections.  In one section were the recipes.  Lizzie gathered recipes from her  own experience, from her  friends, from the girls in the  classes, from their families.  They were recipes for everyone.  There were German recipes,  hassenpfeffer, marinated rabbit,  pfeffernusse, holiday cookies.  There were American recipes for  doughnuts, pot roast, there were  Jewish recipes, gefilte fish,  lochshen kugel, which is like a  noodle pudding, matzo balls.  There were both kosher recipes  and non-kosher recipes, things  like lobster and oysters.  There were luscious names for  recipes, at least for me, like  cracker gruel.  Cracker gruel's what you served  when somebody was sick. 

 Chocolate kiss pudding, fried  mush.  A quarter of the recipes were  dessert recipes and in fact, the  Settlement Cookbook became  famous as a dessert recipe  cookbook, because back then,  cooking with processed sugar and  flour was just beginning in the  1890s.  So Lizzie, in all of her  editions, she was cutting edge.  Whatever was the latest food  fad, eventually got added to the  latest edition of the cookbook.  And because Lizzie herself was a  very frugal house maker, there  was also instructions for  canning and preserving.  Second section of the book were  instructions on how to manage a  household.  Back then, cookbooks weren't  just recipes, they were trying  to teach young homemakers how to  actually manage a home.  Particularly the new immigrants  who didn't know American  customs.  So there were instructions for  things like how to clean the  table between courses of the  meal.  Take the crumb brush and brush  crumbs off of table. 

 How to dust a room.  Start with the highest part of  the room and work your way down.  There was information on  whatever the latest cooking,  cutting-edge technology was.  So back in 1901 that meant they  introduced angel food cake pans  and Dover egg beaters.  Ramekin tins or whatever they're  called.  Also, Fannie Farmer had just  published her cookbook about  1895, and as with many things in  society, they're trying to do  everything more scientifically.  So now, instead of recipes  calling for a pinch of this or a  lump of that or a handful of  that, they tried to get precise  instructions.  So in the Settlement Cookbook,  if you wanted a teaspoon of  something in a recipe, the  instructions were to take the  bowl of the spoon, fill it with  whatever it was, say it was  flour, take a knife, scrape it  across the top of the bowl, and  whatever is left, that would be  the quantity that you would  include.  Well, as I mentioned before, the  cookbook became more and more  popular, published, re-published  again and again.  And one of the things I thought  about after I did all this  research and I've looked at all  the editions of the Settlement  Cookbook in the Milwaukee County  Historical Society, you can  actually see all 34 editions of  the cookbook. 

 You could also see Lizzie's  editions including the notes she  made in the margins as she was  editing one book for the next  edition.  And I did a lot of reading about  sort of culinary history and the  question that I pondered for a  while that I want to share my  thoughts with you, was, why did  this cookbook succeed when so  many others did not?  There had been other fundraising  cookbooks.  There had been other Jewish  cookbooks, but this one was the  keeper.  This was the one that really  worked.  Why?  And here's several speculations  I have.  Ultimately, I think it's Lizzie  herself.  Lizzie, in our day, would be a  CEO of a major corporation.  Lizzie was just a tremendous  organizational wizard and a  marketing wizard.  Think about what she did.  As soon as she decided to  publish the cookbook, her first  plan of attack was deciding  which recipes to include. 

 I'm sure she had enough of her  own recipes, but she must've  thought, if I'm gonna make some  money on this, how am I gonna  get other people interested in  the cookbook?  She asked her friends.  So that meant that all of her  friends were gonna buy the  cookbook, all of their friends  were gonna see the recipes that  those people put in the cookbook  and eventually in Milwaukee in  certain circles, it became very  competitive to have one of your  recipes included in the  Settlement Cookbook.  She got the immigrant girls, she  got their families.  Eventually it morphed into new  immigrants coming to Milwaukee  and eventually throughout the  United States, if you wanted to  learn how to cook American, and  if you wanted to learn how to  cook Jewish recipes in America,  and if you wanted to learn the  way American women run their  households, the Settlement  Cookbook was the book that you  got.  And if you wanted to give a  wedding present to somebody that  was going to help them, the  woman, you gave her a copy of  the Settlement Cookbook.  I've given this presentation  many times in Milwaukee, and I  have many, many women who  brought with their copies of the  Settlement Cookbook that they  had received for wedding  presents in 1940 or 1950.  People keep these cookbooks when  they got 'em, and you can see  all the smears.  And some people can tell,  without looking at the book, if  I say, "What page is the pot  roast recipe on?"  They'll say, "It's on page 47  and it's got a smear of  whatever, gravy on the bottom."  They know their cookbook.  So in part, I think, it was  Lizzie as a driving force.  Lizzie also was a meticulous  editor. 

 As I mentioned, I saw her notes  in the margins from one edition  to the next, and she looked at  every page very carefully.  Not just grammar, but she was  looking to improve the recipes,  weed out what was good, what was  bad.  One of the ones those of you who  are chefs will particularly  appreciate, in the original  recipe in 1901 for deviled eggs,  the recipe called for one cup of  curry powder.  In 1903, the recipe called for  one teaspoon of curry powder.  Somebody must've gotten a big  dose of curry powder in 1901.  One of my favorite stories  tracing the history of different  changes in the cookbooks has to  do with alcohol.  In 1918, Prohibition was passed,  or 1919.  The Settlement Cookbook always  had had recipes for cocktails,  it was very common for middle  class men and women to have  cocktails.  The original book had recipes  for mint juleps and Manhattans,  and brandy Alexander, dandelion  wine, Prohibition passed.  Lizzie's wondering, what should  she do?  She writes the commissioner of  Prohibition and says, can I  still include alcohol in my  cookbooks?  He said, "Definitely not."  So from 1919 to about 1933, I  think, no alcohol in the  cookbooks. 

 Prohibition is ended.  Lizzie wants to have "repeal"  recipes in the next edition of  the cookbook.  I heard this story, Lizzie has a  great-niece who lives in  Chicago, who told me this is a  family legend in this story.  So after Prohibition was  repealed, Lizzie's nephew Ernie  and niece Marie, who were kind  of the young flapper types,  decided they were gonna help  Aunt Lizzie get these repeal  recipes.  So they offered to come to her  house, show her the latest  recipes for making cocktails,  and she could sample them and  then decide which ones she wants  in the cookbook, great.  So they go to Lizzie and Simon's  house in Milwaukee, they've got  all these different concoctions  together, they advise Lizzie,  take a taste and spit it out.  However, Lizzie was a very  proper Victorian woman.  Lizzie did not believe that food  should be wasted.  So Lizzie did not spit out the  food, instead Lizzie swallowed  the food, and much to Ernie and  Marie's embarrassment, they left  two hours later with Lizzie and  Simon passed out on the couch,  having tried too many of those  recipes.  What else?  Lizzie had a good sense of  humor, she could laugh at  herself, in her later days she  talked about her portly figure  being a result of sampling too  many of her own recipes from the  cookbook. 

 I think she was just somebody  people understood, if she was  gonna take on a cause, she was  gonna succeed.  So she could get lots of  volunteers to help her in her  various enterprises.  She had minimal ego at best.  About 1911, the Settlement House  had to move to a new facility.  By this time, the board of  directors had eaten crow and  they realized that this cookbook  was manna from heaven, so they  wanted to name the new  Settlement House after Lizzie,  Kander House.  And Lizzie said, "No, I think  you should name it Lincoln  House, after Abraham Lincoln,  who lived in even worse poverty  than the immigrants I'm working  with."  I've thought about that choice  she made in modern times.  The naming rights are now, we've  got the Kohl Center, we've got  the stadium in Milwaukee, we've  got art museums, and here's  Lizzie turning down this  opportunity.  I thought, what a tremendous,  what great values Lizzie had.  So to conclude, what's Lizzie's  legacy for us?  Well, I would argue that the  playground system in Milwaukee  is a result of Lizzie and her  efforts.  The first playground in  Milwaukee, reasonably quick  playground in Milwaukee, was  built with profits from the  Settlement Cookbook in 1902 at  what's now Golda Meir school,  there's a playground there which  is near where the Settlement  House was. 

 The first preschool in  Milwaukee, 1928, was funded with  profits from the Settlement  Cookbook, at what at that time  was Milwaukee Teacher's College,  it's now UW-Milwaukee.  For 40 years, Milwaukee had a  girls' trade school, because  Lizzie was on the Milwaukee  school board, and there had been  a boy's high school, trade  school, and she thought it was  unfair that just the boys should  have one.  And for 40 years, thousands of  girls in Milwaukee learned  cooking and sewing and millinery  kind of skills.  And of course, we still have the  Settlement Cookbook, that's  still being used as I speak  today.  And still to this day, men and  women are taking their copies of  the cookbook, and they're using  it, or they're passing it on to  the next generation so that  they, too, will have good  recipes to cook and serve their  families.  Thank you.  (applause)