Sold: A Black Texan Trailblazer’s ‘Treasure Chest’ of Recipes

A compact cardboard box full of recipes on index cards was a hot item at a virtual rare book fair earlier this month, selling for $1,650. But this wasn’t your average recipe box. Instead, Lucille’s Treasure Chest of Fine Foods was the work of Lucille Bishop Smith, a trailblazing Black chef, educator, and entrepreneur whose legacy lives on, at both a Houston restaurant named for her and in her sought-after collection of recipes. Smith was born in Crockett, Texas, in 1892. She parlayed years of schooling into a career in…

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