SOUTHERN COOKING

No southern food enthusiast should be without this gathering of 1,300 flavorful recipes for such classic dishes as fried chicken, cornbread, pickled watermelon rinds, and sweet potato pie.

Southern Cooking had its origins in Henrietta Dull's immensely popular cooking column in the Atlanta Journal, whose readers faithfully clipped its recipes. The demand for reprints of perennial favorites or early, hard-to-find dishes prompted Mrs. Dull to compile them into her now-famous book. Not only does it include individual recipes, but it also suggests menus for various occasions and holidays. Her famous Georgia Christmas Dinner, for instance, consists of grapefruit, roast turkey, dry stuffing, dry rice, turkey gravy, candied sweet potatoes, buttered green peas, cranberry jelly, celery hearts, hot biscuits, sweet butter, syllabub, and cake.

Mrs. Dull was one of the most sought-after caterers in Atlanta even before she began her newspaper column. Her vast, practical knowledge of food and its preparation, and her embrace of new, but never gimmicky, innovations in cooking served her readers well. Upon Mrs. Dull's death in 1964 at the age of 100, the Atlanta Journal said that her book was "the standard by which regional cooks have been measured since 1928." Southern Cooking is the starting place for anyone in search of authentic dishes done in the traditional style.