The famous Mrs. Dull

One of the most sought after cookbooks at our estate sales is Southern Cooking, by Mrs. S.R. Dull. Her cooking was anything but “dull,” and introduced mainstream America to southern cooking. A native of Laurens County, Henrietta was born on a plantation in the midst of the civil war and likely learned a lot of her cooking skills from the slaves that prepared the daily meals. She met and married Virginian Sam Dull after her family moved to Atlanta. After the war her father moved the family north to work for the railroad. The Dulls had six children, but Sam began to have lots of health issues and passed away, leaving the young mother and children to fend for themselves.

Henrietta had no other skills to support her family, so she fell back on what she knew: Cooking. She cooked for a lot of churches, word spread of her delicious dishes, and she ended up catering and teaching cooking at several schools. As word spread, Atlanta Gas Light hired her in 1910 to promote their new gas stove. Mrs. Dull converted her recipes from cooking on an open hearth and wood stove to modern gas and electric stoves.

Mrs. Dull approached the Atlanta Journal to perhaps write a recipe column for the paper. She was paired up with another young writer, Margaret Mitchell. This made her wildly popular, and homemakers everywhere wanted a cookbook that contained all of the “recipe clippings.” In 1928 Mrs. Dull compiled all of her recipes into one book. She updated the book in 1941 and removed the “possum” recipe that called for scalding the critter in a big pot of limed water to remove the hair! Yuck!

In essence Mrs. Dull was the first celebrity food person paving the way for all of these other men and women. She was a spokesperson for White Lily flour and was photographed with celebrities including Walt Disney. She was inducted into the Georgia Women of Achievement Hall of Fame. Look her up on your favorite search engine to find much more detailed information and try some of her recipes! One of her most famous recipes was for angel food cake. Readers call it the arch angel food cake because it rose higher than other recipes! Although she had a hard life, Mrs. Dull lived to be 100 years old! Could her cooking have been the secret to a long life? Happy Collecting!

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