With a wineglass of whiskey

Evan A. Kutzler is not a food historian, but by virtue of his ties to Southwest Georgia, he was invited to edit a reissue of “Some Good Things to Eat.” Only one original copy of the 1898 domestic manual authored by Emma Rylander Lane—best known for her namesake cake, which turns up twice in To Kill a Mockingbird—is known to exist.

Mercer University Press published From Biscuits to Lane Cake, an entry in its Food and the American South series, late last year. I began my conversation with Kutzler, now an associate professor of public history at Western Michigan University, by asking about a line in the book’s acknowledgements section: “Jill let me live in what locals call the Jimmy Carter conception room, a long story for another time.”