What can a recipe for date bars reveal about women’s lives in early-twentieth-century Downeast Maine? Many of us are comfortable cooking from a recipe, but how does one approach a recipe as a historical source? Join Rachel A. Snell for an online discussion on Thursday, February 26, 2026, at 6:00 p.m. where she will share her methodology for reading recipes to explore why and how women collected them and how those recipes fit into their lives. Snell is the author of the 2025 Chebacco article "More Than Just a Recipe: Community Cookbooks, Women's History, and Social Life in Downeast Maine," which uncovers how recipe collections served as vital records of community building and social change and is a fascinating look into the social worlds of women in rural Maine through the unlikely lens of two 1920s and 1930s community cookbooks.

Rachel A. Snell is an independent scholar with interests in public history and material culture. She completed a doctorate in history at the University of Maine, and her research uses recipes and other food writing to examine the lived experience of domesticity in the nineteenth century. Formerly a faculty member at the University of Maine and Curator of Collections at the Mount Desert Island Historical Society, she now lives in southern Maryland with her family. More information on her research can be found on her website rachelasnell.wordpress.com