Arden Duane wrote for the Associated Negro Press (ANP), the Chicago wire service that supplied stories to more than two hundred papers each week from Norfolk to Los Angeles for a subscription fee most publishers could afford. Her peach cobbler recipe scales that down to one quart of fruit and a shallow dish, and it splits the sugar so that most of it sweetens the peaches while the rest goes into a batter poured over the hot fruit at the last minute. She closed by offering eight more peach recipes to anyone who mailed her a request and a loose three-cent stamp at 3507 South Parkway, Chicago. That exchange is worth pausing over. A woman in Norfolk could write to a woman in Chicago and receive, for the price of a stamp, knowledge she could turn into a Sunday dessert or a Saturday farmer’s market sales table. The ANP moved intellectual capital cheaply and at scale, and cooks who received them turned the peach recipes into dessert money, and dessert money paid rent.
Peach Cobbler
Ingredients
1 quart peaches
1 ½ cups sugar
1 cup water
3 tablespoons butter
1 egg
1 cup flour
¼ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ cup milk
Directions
Peel the peaches, remove the stones, and cut the fruit into small pieces. Add 1 ¼ cups of the sugar and the water. Bake closely covered in a shallow dish until the fruit is tender. Cream the butter and the rest of the sugar. Gradually add the well beaten egg. Mix and sift the dry ingredients and combine them alternately with the milk into the creamed mixture, blending thoroughly. Pour over the hot fruit and bake twenty-five minutes in a moderately hot oven.
Arden Duane, “Peach Receipes Are Given By Arden Duane,” New Journal and Guide, August 8, 1936, p. 9.
