A Domestic Cookbook

Malinda Russell's A Domestic Cookbook, published in 1866, is recognized as one of the earliest known cookbooks authored by a Black American woman, offering recipes and household guidance from the post–Civil War era.

The book provides insight into culinary practices and domestic life of the period, reflecting both resourcefulness and cultural foodways.

Its survival and scholarship have made it an important archival document for recovering Black women's culinary histories.

Writers and scholars reference Russell's work when tracing lineages of Black cooking traditions and domestic knowledge transmitted outside institutional archives.

Diamond Forde specifically used Russell's measurements as a formal touchstone in composing recipe poems that honor intergenerational culinary inheritance.