Respectfully, I think the domestic/hostess genre can be a source of interesting recipes as the famous barman books are (or not). Plenty of boring drinks in both, plenty of rehashes. But that’s not the point. Rather than perpetuate the problem by treating these books as “women history,” this genre should be recognized for the cultural gold it contains. Domestic history, material culture, would be interesting to anyone interested in drinks I would think. I’ve recently been working on cocktail party history – food, drink, entertainment – and yes the folks that wrote about that tended to be white women in America. Just as the bar books of a generation before tended to be written by white men in America. But those aren’t filed under “men’s literature.”
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