Move over, Nigella. Enough with the 30-minute Meals and the Semi-Homemade craze. Some of us like a little nostalgia, ok? Some of us like to do it the long, hard way.
If really old cookbooks are your thing, do we have the resource for you. Cookbooks From the Open Door is an online shop that carries just about every historical cookbook a collector could want.
They stock everything from Marcus Apicius' First Century Cooking and Dining In Imperial Rome to a facsimile of the original (1931) edition of The Joy of Cooking. Here are some other titles to look forward to:
- First American Cookbook (1796)
- Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1805)
- American Frugal Housewife (1833)
- Miss Leslie's Directions for Cookery (1851)
- What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking (1881)
We may live in the age of the internet, but you can bet Epicurious won't have the recipes for Colonial favorites like spruce beer and Indian slapjacks.
PS. If you are a reader of The Kitchen, give us your opinion. As we prepare to launch The Kitchen seperately this month, Jenny is writing a wine column and we need a hot, cool, hip, edgy, fun name. The column will only be about wine and aim to educate and inspire more wine drinking over the course of a year. Sound good? The tell us what you think the best name is below.
I'm crazy about old cookbooks. Kettner's Book of the Table is a favorite, but most prized are the Victory Cookbook and Rumsford cookbooks given to me by my father, who wanted me to have the cookbooks used by my grandmothers on both sides of the family. I don't know that I've ever made a recipe from either of them, but when I see them standing in my great-grandmother's Hoosier cabinet, or leaf through the pages full of inserted recipes clipped from now-yellowed newspapers, or written longhand on floury indx cards, I feel fed in more ways than one.
write-in:
i vote for
"The Cellar"
:) rzi
my favorite vintage cookbook i ever found is called "To The Queens Taste" written by Helen Train Hilles
it includes such gems as how to survive entertaining guests that drop by your winter cabin un-invited, how to feed children at dinner parties, how to make your larder stretch (dealing with wartime rationing and all) and how to cook for a Southern husband when you're a nice upstanding WASP woman from the more sophisticated Northeast
its truly good stuff, and has some wonderful recipes, but mainly i love it for the snap-shot in time that it givers
For NY'ers, don't forget about Kitchen Arts & Letters on 93rd Street. Unbelievable collection, lots of old stuff.
www.kitchenartsandletters.com/
For really old online cookbooks, check out "Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project":
http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/cookbooks/index.html
does anyone know where i can find the "I hate to Cook Book?" not available at amazon, bn.com or strand.com or this web site AT mentions.
Cristy,
I think if you search under the author's name, Peg Bracken, you will find the book at most book stores.
skgr
the new york times ran a story last week about someone at nyu who amassing a wide ranging library of cookbooks and cook lore. i wonder if it's accessable for research? more than fifty blocks uptown, bergdorf goodman's home floor has a niche shop of jane stubbs books. one section is vintage cookbooks. there are also fun celebrity titles like in pearl's kitchen, with pearl bailey.
Patrick,
Yes, we blogged that on the new food site (which is not public yet, but will be soon, so you can read about it in the archives, or maybe AT will throw it up early for all of you vintage cookbook fanatics.) The word is that it's open for research, but only "serious" food research, i.e. not to get a recipe for linguini.
I am looking for cut-up cake recipes from Baker's Coconut (late 1950's or 1960's) Does anyone out there have them?
Looking for cookbooks from the southern living-southern heritage cookbook collection