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Cooking Down East
Marjorie Standish
For many Maine kitchens, *Cooking Down East* is the cookbook—the one splattered and dog-eared on the shelf. Marjorie Standish, who wrote a long-running cooking column for the *Maine Sunday Telegram*, gathered her readers' and her own favorite recipes into this 1969 collection of plain, reliable Down East home cooking: baked beans, chowders, biscuits, blueberry everything, church-supper casseroles. It makes no claim to gourmet ambition and needs none; its value is as a faithful record of how Maine people actually cooked and ate in the mid-twentieth century. The instructions are friendly and unfussy, written by someone who clearly answered a lot of kitchen questions. For anyone interested in New England foodways, regional American cooking, or simply a trove of dependable old-fashioned recipes, it's a beloved and enduring classic.
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The author
Marjorie Standish (1908–1994) was Maine's best-known cooking authority, writing the popular 'Cooking Down East' column for the Maine Sunday Telegram for decades. She spoke directly to home cooks, and her recipes carried the trust of a familiar local voice.
The book
Cooking Down East: Favorite Maine Recipes was first published in 1969 by the Guy Gannett Publishing Company of Portland. It collects the regional staples of Maine home cooking—seafood, beans, breads, and the state's famous blueberries—in straightforward, tested form, and has stayed in print for generations.
How it has aged
Tastes have changed and some recipes read as period pieces, but that is part of the charm: the book is both a working cookbook and a cultural document of mid-century Maine. It remains a fixture in Maine homes and a favorite regional gift.
For more context
Standish's work sits within a strong tradition of New England community and regional cookbooks that preserved local foodways well before the modern farm-to-table revival.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Marjorie Standish
- Publisher
- Guy Gannett Publishing Co.
- Place of publication
- Portland, Maine
- Year
- 1969
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Craft & How-to
- Location
- Maine
Places