"What's the Recipe for a Queer Cookbook," a Physical and Digital Exhibit

This exhibit was curated by Dr. Alex Ketchum of the IGSF with special assistance from Jacqueline Lee-Tam. The physical exhibit will be in the hallways of the Leacock Building of McGill University from August 18 - December 20, 2021. The digital exhibit will live on historicalcookingproject.com.

What is a queer cookbook? Is there a set recipe for what makes a cookbook queer? Is it that the author is queer? Or is there something inherently queer about the cookbook itself? What do Lou Rand Hogan’s The Gay Cookbook of 1966; the Bloodroot Collective’s Political Palate of 1980; the Cincinnati Lesbian Activist Bureau’s 1983 cookbook Whoever Said Dykes Can’t Cook?; The Lesbian Erotic Cookbook by Ffiona Morgan Genre (1998); and Lesbians Have to Eat, Too! by Jenice Armstead (2011) have in common? Does a cookbook published by a global media company and marketed as “queer,” such as Buzzfeed’s  Tasty Pride: 75 Recipes and Stories from the Queer Food Community (2020) count as a queer cookbook? This exhibit focused on American and Canadian cookbooks raises these questions. 

Thank you to Les Archives Gaies du Québec and the Les Archives Lesbiennes du Québec for their contributions to the exhibit. Thank you in particular to Simone Beaudry- Pilotte of the AGQ and Laure Neuville of the ALQ for assisting me in locating recipes within your archives.