The University of Kentucky Press has re-issued Jennie Benedict’s Blue Ribbon Cook Book. The recipe for her famous Benedictine spread, conspicuously absent from previous editions, appears in the re-issue.
Susan Reigler, former Louisville Courier-Journal restaurant critic and author of the Compass American Guide to Kentucky and Adventures in Dining: Kentucky Bourbon Country has contributed a new introduction.
According to John Egerton,
Jennie C. Benedict was a renowned Louisville caterer and cafe
owner from 1898 to 1925. Miss Benedict pioneered in gas-stove
cooking and was a creator as well as replicator of classic dishes.
Benedictine spread was one of her contributions. The recipes in
this collector’s dream of a cookbook are a blend of Southern and
cosmopolitan, from spoonbread and sugar pie to lamb chops.
J.P. Morton & Company (of Louisville) published Miss Benedict’s autobiography, The Road To Dream Acre in 1938.