The women's suffrage movement in America utilized bake sales and cookbook compilation as strategies to raise funds and promote their cause. These activities also served to strengthen connections among women involved in the movement.
Historical recipes from suffragist publications, such as the Woman's Exponent in Salt Lake City, featured measurements in pounds for ingredients like flour and butter, differing from modern cup measurements. These recipes often contained ingredients less common today and lacked specific cooking temperatures or times. For instance, recipes from the 1880s, when most cooking was done with cast iron stoves, often used terms like "a quick oven" instead of precise temperature settings.
Attempts to recreate 1885 "kiss cakes" based on historical recipes yielded items that differed in sweetness and modern embellishments such as sprinkles or frosting.
Bake sales, featuring items like cookies, cakes, pies, and small "kiss cakes," were conducted across regions, including Salt Lake City and the Western United States. Funds generated from these sales supported suffragists' travel to advocate for women's voting rights nationwide.
Cookbooks compiled by suffragists also served as a means to raise awareness for their cause while acknowledging women's traditional roles in their households as cooks. According to Juli McLoone, curator at the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive at the University of Michigan, these cookbooks were a component of the broader suffrage strategy.
The cookbooks reflected a regard for women's work, addressing housekeeping, childcare, and wider community responsibilities. The perspective was that efficient domestic management could allow time for civic engagement.
While some suffragists advocated for women to completely leave domestic roles, many did not aim to abandon their household responsibilities.
The Suffrage Cook Book, published in 1915 by the Equal Franchise Federation of Western Pennsylvania, included a recipe for ginger cookies. This cookbook also featured testimonials from governors of states where women had already secured voting rights, primarily in the Western states, and offered a recipe intended to persuade husbands to support women's suffrage.
Bake sales and cookbooks provided a counter-narrative to the public portrayals of women suffragists, who were sometimes characterized negatively. These efforts presented an alternative image that integrated traditional female roles with their advocacy for voting rights.