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The Museum

Cookbooks as time capsule

A short selected history of Western recipe collections.

We started this issue with a lot of reminiscing about our family cookbooks and recipes. I get especially excited about this topic.

For the food, of course. 

But also for this idea that cookbooks are a way of sharing something across generations in a way other books or items cannot.  Cookbooks offer so much more than ingredients on paper.

It’s true the first recorded “recipes” were just lists of food without notes of how to prepare it, but there’s more embedded in those cookbook lists. Like the author’s experience making the food and sharing that food with others.

Cookbooks are interesting places to learn about history and society.

Of course, most cookbooks aren’t written with history in mind. They are practical tools that may leave a lot unsaid and can stir up more questions. Such as, who are the people who collected and used these recipes? Where did they live? What was going on at the time?

Still, throughout history, creators have had an inherent desire to pay forward things they’ve made. Cooks and their cookbooks included.

So what did some of our early cookbooks tell us?

The beginnings of the Western cookbooks were exclusively male and upper class. It was shared knowledge for a few. 

Which is so different from my exclusively female beginnings in the kitchen — my mother and grandmothers and aunts taught me to cook and were the first to share their recipes and cookbooks with me.

Here’s just a sliver of how cookbooks — and our cultures — have evolved:

• 1800s BCE
  The instructions for making flatbread were etched onto walls of an Egyptian tomb, making this the oldest recipe discovered to date. 

• 1300s BCE
  Clay tablets with a hymn to goddess Ninkasi contained a recipe for making Sumerian beer, otherwise referred to as “liquid bread.”

• 400 CE
  The first recorded cookbook is published, called De Re Coquinaira (Of Culinary Matters). Written by Roman named Apicius, it contains over 500 recipes. His work may have killed him — Apicius lost his money from eating and used his last coins on an epic banquet in which he poisoned himself in the last course. 

• 1300 CE
  The oldest cookbook in English is published by King Richard II’s master cooks. Called The Forme of Cury (Cury means cookery), the book had 196 recipes including those for how to cook whale and heron with different spices. Cookbooks of this time were largely restricted to noble classes and the people who cooked for them.

• 1439 CE
  The Gutenberg Press makes it easier and more affordable to print cookbooks, which causes a rise in the number created during 16th and 17th centuries. 

• 1585 CE
  The Good Housewife’s Jewell is published and reprinted a year later due to its popularity. This book marks a shift from cookbooks being written for men to being written for women.

• Early 1600s
  “Books of secrets” begin appearing. These cookbooks serve as behind the scenes accounts of the kitchens of the rich. They were read by noblewomen hoping to learn ways to ingratiate themselves into company of those with higher social status, including the Queen of England.

• 1653 CE
  The first cookbook published (posthumously) by a woman, the countess of Kent. Most early cookbooks were written by men and for professional male cooks. 

• 1670 CE
  Hannah Woolley is the first non-noblewoman to have her name printed on a cookbook. Read by people who didn’t work in noble households, the book’s recipes reflect simpler, more economical cooking. This marks a shift in who writes cookbooks and who is reading cookbooks.

• 1700s onward
  Cookbooks become more democratized and popularized, with far more female writers. 

Things change, as they do, thank goodness! Now there are cookbooks everywhere and for everyone. 

As I continue my interest in cookbooks and history, I’ve added a number of cookbooks to my reading list. These books offer up recipes along with a history of the people and places that created them:

Vintage volumes:

• The American Regional Cookbook by Nancy and Arthur Hawkins; 1976

  

• TIME-LIFE Foods of the World (Set of 27 hardcover color cookbooks); 1968

  

  Partial and complete sets are available on various online auction sites.

More recent releases:

• The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz; 2012

• American Regional Cuisine by Michael F. Nenes; 2015

• American Cake: From Colonial Gingerbread to Classic Layer, the Stories and Recipes Behind More Than 125 of Our Best-Loved Cakes: A Baking Book by Ann Byrn; 2016

• Victuals: An Appalachian Journey, with Recipes by Ronni Lundy; 2016

• The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael W. Twitty; 2017

• Black Food: Stories, Art, and Recipes from Across the African Diaspora [A Cookbook] by Bryant Terry (Ed.); 2021

Is there a must-read title missing from this list? Let us know!

Reply to this email or post a comment.

The Gallery

No starving artists in these kitchens!

Satisfy your appetite with these 4 vintage creator cookbooks.

They say cooking is an art. And that’s even more true when painters, writers, and other artists showcase their creativity in the kitchen.

We found four vintage collections that capture artist’s unique talents and their stories, and feature their creations using a different — and far more edible — palette.

The Artists’ & Writers’ Cookbook

Beryl Barr, Barbara Turner Sachs (Eds.) | 1961

With over 200 recipes from 150 novelists, painters, poets, and sculptors, this 1961 volume features favorite family recipes and stories from the likes of John Keats, Harper Lee, and Burl Ives. One novelist submitted a six-page recipe for fried chicken, while a Dada and Surrealist painter provided a menu that included ball bearings and toy blocks!

Free Hand Cooking

Foothills Art Center | 1970

Twelve Colorado artists shared their favorite recipes in this showcase cookbook that also includes their bios and work samples. The collection came with an invitation to attend a December 6th book signing and reception with the artists and contributors at the Foothills Art Center in Denver.

The Museum of Modern Art Artists’ Cookbook

Madeleine Conway, Nancy Kirk (Eds.) | 1978

We’re told to “eat our colors”. Perhaps that comes easy with the Artists’ Cookbook — a collection of over 150 recipes from Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Salvador Dali, and 27 other talented painters and sculptors. It includes interviews with the artists that shed light on the their early cooking experiences.

Monet's Table

Claire Joyes | 1989

Written by the artist’s great-granddaughter-in-law, Monet’s Table is “part cookbook, part art history book, and part domestic memoir” of the Monet family’s way of life. Find their colorful recipes for pickled beef, garlic soup, and a simply named “Green Cake”.

Troves & Tales

Cooking in the margins

The value-add in a hand-me-down cookbook.

My Great Aunt Dorothy was a talented and devoted home cook. Whether it was for everyday meals, for special occasions, or simply because she wanted to try something new, Aunt D embraced everything about cooking — follow the recipe, make it your own, pay attention, take notes.

For her, cooking wasn’t a chore. It was her love language.

I first experienced that love as a late ‘90s college student living in the school dorms in Ohio. Her care packages always contained delicious homemade cookies, which became so popular among my friends they earned a reputation. When a new package arrived, dorm-mates would ask, “are those cookies from your aunt?!?!”

I can see the corner of Aunt D’s kitchen with her cookbooks — a modest couple of shelves with meaningful recipe collections. There were books she picked out herself and books she was gifted — hardbacks of classics and spiral-bound volumes from churches, fundraisers, and relatives’ travels. She was intentional about the cookbooks she kept and how she used them.

A food blogger ahead of her time

An Aunt Dorothy cookbook is not your ordinary cookbook. In the margins or alongside the ingredient list, always in pencil, were her notes — details of how the dish turned out, the family’s reaction, what she thought should be altered next time. She cross-referenced other recipes that were part of the meal.

Each note had the date of when she attempted a dish, some recipes having multiple dates spanning several decades. The dates made clear her favorites, and also showed her progression as a cook over time, as tastes, cooking gear, and lifestyles changed.

Aunt D’s cookbook notes revealed more than opinion of the food. They captured her character.

Like when a dish wasn’t a hit. Heavier pencil, big Xs marking out the whole recipe, and a flat out “NO!” left no doubt of her feelings.

In 2012, when Aunt D was transitioning from her Virginia home of 50+ years to a senior living apartment, I went to visit her for a couple of July days. She was in the midst of downsizing, wanting to find new homes for her prized possessions. And I was one of the lucky recipients.

Artwork. Some nick-nacks. Her wok.

And a few of her cookbooks.

One was a San Antonio, Texas community cookbook that her husband had gotten her on his first work trip.

I made a few recipes from that San Antonio cookbook. And added my own penciled notes in the margins, copying Aunt D’s template.

I felt honored to have received such an important piece of her — she took such pride in her cooking and more so in loving her people through good food — and I felt the responsibility to do her right.

To execute a recipe to the best of my ability. And to capture the complete culinary experience.

Because that is the story within a cookbook, that is the history — a time capsule of how food brought us together, what we celebrated, how we lived. A simple yet revealing journal of our daily lives.

And Aunt Dorothy did it best.

In 2023, my cousin, Katie — Aunt D’s granddaughter — was getting married. She and her husband-to-be were serious home cooks and passionate about their Polish and Italian heritages. And I knew how close Katie was with her grandmother. As I set out to gift them something special for their kitchen, an oven light came on. 💡

Katie needed to have her grandmother’s cookbook.

My Aunt Dorothy passed away in 2022, after years battling illness. She was like a grandmother to me, so the loss hit hard. For Katie, it hit even harder.

So ahead of Katie’s wedding, I pulled out the San Antonio cookbook and gently thumbed through its pages. I went back in time, reading notes that brought to life a wonderful woman who cared deeply about the food she made and the people she made it for.

I met a faithful mother feeding her family a Lenten menu in the ‘70s, a host preparing a feast for her visiting Buffalo relatives in the ‘80s, and a baker making her friend a birthday cake in the ‘90s.

I smiled knowingly when she bragged her cookies were a hit with her children’s college mates in 1982.

I then took pictures of every cookbook page with Aunt D’s handwriting, to have my own digital keepsake. I wrote Katie a letter calling out my favorite recipe notes, tucked it under the cover, and wrapped it up.

It was time to share — and continue — my Aunt Dorothy’s legacy with the next generation.

Fork in the Road

Oven-hot debate: community cookbooks

Recipe riches or recipe rubbish?

Along with family recipe books and cards, I’ve inherited a stack of old church and community group cookbooks.

They all have the same look with their plastic coil binding and typewriter font. 

They don’t have the design polish of bookstore cookbooks made by the pros, but the recipes inside are not to be overlooked. 

I am a firm believer there is gold in these books filled with crowdsourced recipes from church and community groups put together and sold as a fundraiser. 

I mean, people (often women) like my grandmother were putting forward their family favourite recipes for these collections. They were recipes they made often and knew people liked. 

Want a good recipe for chocolate cake or coleslaw or meatballs? Dig into one of these books and you are sure to find a winner for traditional staples. 

Yes, there are a few fun and curious additions as well. Try if you dare. 

I also love that people’s names are on these recipes. You know that this is Barb P’s potato salad recipe. I don’t have to know Barb, but I appreciate there is a person behind this creation. 

Of course, there is some debate about these community cookbooks. (Nonsense, in my opinion.)

While some people see the value in these books — tested recipes, crowd pleasers, and economical, no-fuss offerings — others do not. 

They see recipes with unclear instructions. Or products you can’t find anymore. Or incorrect measurements. Or just tastes that have changed with the times. 

Oh well.

I will keep my family’s church cookbooks — partly because my grandmother’s name appears in the pages — but let’s open this up for discussion.

Do we like community cookbooks or should they be recycled? 

Tell us your thoughts!

Off Road

This week’s finds:

• Really wanna heat things up? Grab pot holders, then get your hands on the Pyromaniacs Cookbook. Published in 1968, this collection of recipes lets you play with food and fire. Impress your guests with a “showstopping” Gin Sundae volcano!

  

  Get a first edition, first printing here for around $100.

• Culinary nerds, your next happy place is set with an entirely different kind of “table”. Check out The Sifter — a robust, searchable, and exportable database of thousands of historical food-related works. Capturing well over a half century of culinary research, it’s the brainchild and dream-come-true of historian Barbara Ketchum Wheaton — who at age 93 is still on The Sifter’s advisory board. Add to The Sifter’s repository or nerd out in the next interactive research session of The Ask.

  

• The largest (unofficial) collection of cookbooks in a personal collection may belong to this woman. She keeps track of her extensive collection over on her blog The Vintage Cookery.

  

  Sue Jimenez when she was awarded the Guinness World Record in 2013. She has since lost that title despite her collection ballooning to almost triple its 2013 amount. The process to hold the title is just too time-consuming to go through again.

  
  

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