Nora L. Rubel, "Recipes for the Melting Pot: The Lives of the Settlement Cook Book" (Columbia UP, 2026)

July 15, 2026

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5 min read

In 1901, a Milwaukee woman named Elizabeth Black Kander—credited on the cover as Mrs. Simon Kander—asked the all-male board of the Milwaukee Jewish Mission for $18 to print a pamphlet of recipes. They refused, calling it frivolous. She went ahead anyway, secured local business sponsors, and printed the first edition of what would become The Settlement Cook Book. Over the next nine decades, it went through 40 editions and sold more than two million copies, making it the most successful charitable cookbook in American history. Nora L. Rubel, a professor of religion and classics at the University of Rochester, spent 14 years tracing its story. Her book Recipes for the Melting Pot: The Lives of the Settlement Cook Book (Columbia University Press, 2026) uses this single object to examine how food, assimilation, and identity worked in practice for Jewish immigrants and the broader American public.

A Cookbook Born from a Settlement House

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What you'll learn

1 (02:06) **What is the Settlement Cook Book?** - Nora introduces the subject: a massively popular, decades-long bestseller that became an enduring touchstone of Jewish American culture.
2 (06:13) **The Creator & Her Mission** - Nora explains who Elizabeth Kander was and why she wrote the book.
3 (08:21) **The Problem: The Chasm Between Jewish Communities** - The cultural and religious divide that motivated the project.
4 (11:18) **The Origin Story: $18 for a Pamphlet** - How the cookbook was born from a practical need.
5 (13:53) **A Different Kind of Community Cookbook** - What made this book stand out from other charitable cookbooks of the era.
6 (18:33) **Assimilation on the Page: Culinary Pluralism** - How the book engaged with debates about immigration and American identity.
7 (23:31) **The Shifting Audience** - Who the book was for changed dramatically over time.

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Show Notes

In 1901, Lizzie Black Kander put together a cookbook based on the classes she taught at the Milwaukee Jewish Mission. “I was trying to teach a group of young foreign girls in a crowded neighborhood how to cook simple and nutritious food, yet have it attractive and inexpensive as we prepare it in America,” she recalled. The Settlement Cook Book would go on to be the most successful charitable cookbook in American history, remaining a best-seller into the 1970s. Despite including nonkosher recipes, it became a mainstay in Jewish kitchens and an enduring touchstone of Jewish American culture.

Recipes for the Melting Pot: The Lives of The Settlement Cook Book (Columbia University Press, 2026) by Dr. Nora Rubel tells the remarkable story of The Settlement Cook Book, demonstrating how it shaped Jewish American identity—and was in turn shaped by generations of Jewish women. Dr. Rubel traces the cookbook’s evolution across forty editions over several decades, through waves of immigration, shifting gender roles, upward mobility, suburbanization, and rapid changes in Jewish life. She argues that the book celebrates pluralism, allowing it to serve at once as a tool for Americanization, a repository of tradition, and a platform for culinary innovation. Ultimately, The Settlement Cook Book is a record of American Jewish women’s history, told through the food they made and the lives they led. A cultural biography of an iconic cookbook, this lively and inviting book shares an inclusive vision of American cuisine.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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