KENNEBUNK – The Brick Store Museum has nearly 30,000 archival materials in its collections, comprising of letters, diaries, ledgers, photographs, sketchbooks, and cookbooks relating to local Kennebunk history and those who lived in the town in prior centuries.

One such artifact is a cookbook made up of recipes collected by the museum’s founder, Edith Barry; it has now been reproduced in its entirety with editorial notes and biographies included. The book, “Edith’s Cookbook: Treasured Recipes and Women’s Lives,” can be read for its history, culinary offerings and storytelling.

According to a Aug. 2 news release, “Though Barry collected the recipes into book-form in the 1950s, the recipes within the book came from female family members from generations before and friends and neighbors in Kennebunk in the 19th and early-20th centuries. Flipping through the reproduced pages (some are even stained, with handwritten notes), one will find over one hundred recipes that span three centuries.”

The book also includes modern interpretations of cooking notes (i.e. what a “slow oven” means), historical images and biographies of the women who shared the recipes with Barry.

The book was written and edited the museum team of Amy Tyson (local chef and museum trustee), Leanne Hayden (collections and archives manager) and Cynthia Walker (executive director).

Those interested in either cooking or local history (or both) would likely be interested in exploring the book that focuses in particular on women’s local history, which often gets overlooked in the grand storytelling of local shipbuilding lore.

The book can be purchased at the Brick Store Museum’s shop at 117 Main St. in Kennebunk, or at www.brickstoremuseum.org.

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