'Aunt Chick' Donates Cookbook Collection
Tulsa Daily World, December 9, 1973
Section F1 and F2
Mrs. Sam McBirney is "Aunt Chick" to every housewife in the country who has a little gray in her hair.
Younger cooks might not recognize her name, but they probably use the many practical cooking gadgets and ideas she created when she became a nationally known columnist for the Tulsa Daily World.
She is giving her collection of approximately 1,000 cookbooks to the Tulsa City-County Library. They are sprinkled with "Aunt Chick's" comments on their individual value and will make a most unique addition to the third floor Business and Technology Department of the Central Library.
The cookbook collection begins with her first cookbook given to her when she was married to Sam McBirney in 1913 after she graduated from the Stout Institute, Menomonie, Wis., which was the second school in the nation devoted exclusively to home economics.
As the charming and civic-minded member of an old and prominent Tulsa family (Sam was a banker and was famous as the coach of the outstanding 1916 Kendall College football team), she did not hesitate to put her active mind to work and quickly became "Aunt Chick" to the nation.
As Nettie Williams she came to Claremore to teach home economics and to find a sleeper clause in her contract that had added lunch for 125 students to her classroom duties.
After two years in Claremore and one year as supervisor of home economics in the Muskogee Public Schools, she married McBirney and moved to Tulsa where they built a home way out in the country at 16 Street and Denver Avenue.
Actually cooking was not a consuming passion with Mrs. McBirney, but her lively interest, as chairman of the cafeteria committee for the YWCA and the Junior League tearoom were.
She came into her own in the war years and during the Depression. When women were put back into the kitchen, she led them on with interesting discoveries.
One of the things she understood about what goes on in a kitchen was that "Judy O'Grady and the Colonel's lady are sisters under the skin."
To that end she listened to women wherever she went and that is how she learned so much.
"I really didn't take anyone's word for recipes, " she said, "but, I do remember that one woman said 'try my lemon pie.' She claimed it was the best lemon pie there was. I took the recipe and tried it and I agreed.
"Then in one demonstration, I commented that all women have trouble with meringue.
"A girl who didn't look like she knew enough to come in out of the rain opened her eyes wide and told me she didn't have any trouble with her meringue.
She agreed with my procedure until I said use a low oven no higher than 325 degrees. Then she explained that she didn't have a thermometer and never knew at what degree her oven was. As a matter of fact, she said, she couldn't even get her oven door shut.
"I'd stumbled onto the secret -- no more weepy meringues -- just leave the door open about an inch and it'll work like magic."
As "Aunt Chick" she was an authority on pies and her pie cookbook is still a standard in many homes. It was her wire bottom pie pan for custards and her pastry cloths that set women up in the pie making department.
In addition she designed cookie cutters and the Christmas ones are still on the market, including a Santa Claus, star, stocking and tree shapes. She also has a flower set for tea cookies.
She liked the way Oklahoma women made biscuits and fried chicken and she found out it was the kind of flour they used.
"When I decided I wanted to go to work I went to N. G. Henthorne at the World and he offered me $15 a week to write a column which I did, but I would have written about good cooking free," she said.
While Mrs. McBirney wouldn't name a "favorite" cookbook, she said that, if a woman gets a good cookbook and follows it exactly, she can be a good cook and she said a woman only needs three cookbooks in her collection.
The collection she is donating to the library covers many regions of countries and kinds of cooking. It spans three wars and the great Depression so it will be of great research value.
Specifically she thought that one of her good ones was the Inglenook cookbook, "A Cook's Tour of Eastern Shore Maryland."
She also likes the "Cooking in the Land of Corn" which has reproductions of Grant Wood's paintings.
Tulsa's current cooking instructor is Mrs. Aileen Martin, who dropped by for a visit during the photographing session.
"This is my professor, " she said, referring to "Aunt Chick" despite the fact that she has been to famous cooking schools all over the world.
With bittersweet tenderness, Mrs. McBirney said that she was giving up her home at 1350 E. 27th Place and moving to an apartment that wouldn't accommodate the books. Old time Tulsans will be sad, too, for the house was a showplace for great social events during her younger days.
Reprinted with permission from the Tulsa World.