What Did Your Family Eat in the 1920s?

Ever wonder about your ancestor's life in the 1920s?  The website, The Roaring Twenties: A Historical Snapshot of Life in the 1920s and their  blog, provides some great information about all sorts of social history including food.The short article on food includes information on what foods were ate, appliances and prohibition. A list of food advertisements provides an idea of what was available from various companies. Other pages that relate to food include Prohibition and Gard...

Read More

The El Paso Cookbook

In many cases, community cookbooks are self published in small runs so that many are never archived. The total number of community cookbooks ever published will probably never be known.  But in a rare case, a cookbook may be reprinted and annotated for a modern audience.  Such is the case for the El Paso Cookbook, originally written to benefit the Ladies Axillary of the Y.M.C.A. in El Paso, Texas. This book is available to read at Google Books and available for sale at Amazon.This cookbook provides a short history of charity cookbooks...

Read More

On the Bookshelf: The American History Cookbook

I've been reading various cookbook histories and picked up The American History Cookbook by Mark H. Zanger at my local library. This book provides the reader with  historical information on food and recipes throughout American history. These recipes are largely from cookbooks published in each historical era. Recipes begin with America before it was "discovered" and then continue through history to include the Revolutionary War, Early American Health Food, The Civil War, Settlers and Homesteaders, World War I, The Great Depression, World War...

Read More

Church Record Sunday: Historic Paxton Church Cookbook

You have to love a cookbook that has so much rolled into it. Not only does the cookbook, Historic Paxton, Her Days and Her Ways 1722-1913. Family Recipes Contributed by The Women's Aid Society of Paxton Church have recipes but it also has a comprehensive history of this Paxton, Pennsylvania  church. This history includes not only the church, the ministers, and the attached school but even the history of the graveyard.  This is my kind of cookbook! There is 144 pages of historical content before you reach the recipes section.To get to...

Read More

Recipes from the Past: Vinegar Pie

Have you ever thought about the food that generations past ate but that for whatever reason is absent from your dinner table?  I'm always interested in knowing why some of the dishes of our parents or even grand-parents generation no longer are fixed.  Now, I do realize that in some cases you wouldn't want them to end up on your dinner plate....

Read More

Libraries and Websites to Find Community Cookbooks

This list will be migrating over to the right side bar but for now I thought I would bring your attention to just a few places that have collections of community cookbooks.  These resources are not just regional, they have collections from all over the United States. This list is in no particular order.LibrariesLos Angeles Public LibraryUniversity of Illinois LibraryLibrary of Congress Radcliffe Institute Schlesinger Library Harvard University WebsitesInternet Archive...

Read More