For an inside digital peruse of other historic culinary books, check out the digital access copies site created by MSU:
Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project
Created and maintained by the Michigan State University Library.
The Iva M. Freeman Library Historical Culinary collection is comprised of 192 books published between the late 1800's until 1960. This was a very robust era for book publishing, and especially cooking manuals, where previously the only source of a recipe was handed down to the family on index cards or through well used annotated cookbooks.
Since cookbooks are used in proximity to their liquid ingredients suggested, they often incur staining that in time can lead to their demise. This coupled with the brittle wood pulp papers they were printed on makes the directive of saving these books a bit more difficult.
Some of the books in our collection were previously family owned and hold that memory in the annotated marginalia, but most of them are in considerably good shape and have maintained use, despite the brittle contents and wearing boards.
Overall the collection tells a story of graphic design, illustration, fashion, and cultural food history. Recipe collections include European, as well as American cookbooks, and you can find everything from Boiled Tongue to Aspic salads and early housewifery advice. Cookbooks came about as guides to housewives; and included cleaning and laundry tips, as well as relationship advice.
The collection is housed in the main area of the library, alongside the Culinary Reference section for use in the library only.
Printed by the Japan Travel Bureau, Tokyo, Japan, ©1958 for Western Cooks.
The famous Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe is found in the source
Published by Little, Brown and Company, ©1953.
Some Favorite Southern Recipes of The Duchess of Windsor.
It is noted in this book, Martha Washington, our country’s first First Lady, held a manuscript of handwritten recipes to which was later published by Marie Kimball in 1940.
