Time Travel Kitchen
Kitchen Notes: Collecting Vintage Cookbooks
A few weeks ago I was asked about the old cookbooks I’ve collected and where I find them.
The Joy of Cooking (1931) and The Fanny Farmer Cook Book (1896) were the first ‘old’ cookbooks I collected. They aren’t vintage but are newer editions of the originals and I purchased them online.
For vintage books, eBay and Thriftbooks have been great sources and web searches for specific vintage recipes I’m interested in have always yielded results.
I have about twenty vintage cookbooks so it’s not a huge collection…yet.
I’m constantly on the lookout for cookbooks since starting this newsletter, which is another fun part of the project.
The books pictured date from the 1800’s to the late 1930’s and among them are ‘pamphlet cookbooks’ that were published by consumer goods companies and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
So this is the first ‘Baker’s Dozen’ stack of old and vintage books I’ve baked from recently or used for reference and research.
If you’ve got a cookbook lover in your life, they make great gifts.
Photo from bottom to top, with original publication dates:
The Master Cake Baker, 1927
Everybody’s Cook Book, 1927
Everybody’s Cook Book,Updated, 1934
The General Foods Cookbook, 1933
The Original White House Cookbook, 1887
Aunt Sammy’s Radio Recipes, 1926
Aunt Sammy’s Radio Recipes, updated 1931
Balanced Recipes by Pillsbury, 1933
The Chicago Daily News Cookbook, 1925
The Joy of Cooking, 1931
The Original Fanny Farmer Cookbook, 1896
Modern Priscilla Cookbook, 1924
The Physiology of Taste, 1825
I’ll do another book stack down the line as my collection grows. It’s great to find a treasure and then flip through the pages that come alive when you bake from them.
Another Note
Thanks so much to Alison Acheson for featuring this newsletter on her own. Alison writes The Unschool For Writers A DIY MFA, so definitely visit her page, it’s terrific.
See you Friday with recipes for a popular type of cookie from the 1920’s that’s delicious and easy to make with a dough that can be made well ahead of time and frozen.
Have a good week!
Jolene
photo: Jolene
Great timing! I had just finished a stressful university lesson and almost killed a couple of my students (luckily for them it was a Zoom lesson) when your story about vintage cookbooks popped up on my screen.
I read your very nice piece while having a cup of tea and eating rum raisin chocolate, and now I feel better thank you very much.
Cookbooks may not be my niche but a big pile of books is always a sight to behold.
I don't cook a lot, much less bake (too many tears, ha) but I adore vintage cookbooks for the glimpse of life they offer. There's a lot of time and place buried in those pages -- I find it both fascinating and comforting to access such particular documents of change (and sometimes lack thereof!)
I also love those community cookbooks that are put together and printed by churches, cultural clubs, and other groups, for the same reason -- I like to picture a bunch of grandmothers pooling their (incredible) knowledge so that all their loved ones can benefit. They also used a heck of a lot of butter (margarine was illegal in Wisconsin for 72 years so if it wasn't butter, it was lard) and who doesn't love a liberal hand when it comes to butter?