Advertisers Index from The Community Cook Book. South Orange, New Jersey

As I have written previously, many community cookbooks have advertisements scattered among the recipes.  This was a win-win situation for both the group who was publishing the cookbook and the business advertising. This is also great for genealogists and researchers since that provides information that includes people's names and occupations....

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Cookbook Advertising Directed at Women 1912

One of the great aspects of community cookbooks is that they often include advertisements from community businesses. These advertisements helped pay for the printing of the cookbook. In the example below, the bank decided to target women in their advertisement, which was smart since they were the ones who used the cookbooks.  The bank was probably...

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New Jersey Community Cookbooks

Have a female ancestor from New Jersey?  There is a list of New Jersey community cookbooks on the Rutgers University Libraries website.  These cookbooks were written by women  from churches to membership organizations from 1900 to the present d...

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Food Friday: Jellied Veal Loaf

I like gelatin but I must admit that the combination of meat with gelatin doesn't thrill me.  I grew up with lots of Jello for dessert but mostly it was combined with fruit or a whipped topping. I remember the first time I saw a tomato aspic mold, I was about 20 years old, I couldn't understand why in the world someone thought that combining Jello...

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Happy Thanksgiving!

From: http://hubpages.com/hub/Thanksgiving-vintage-postca...

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1913 Student Recipe Book from Brigham Young College

From Brigham Young College Recipes (1913) available from University of Utah.While this cookbook is not a community cookbook,  it is a cookbook written by a Brigham Young College student and her instructor that includes contributions from other women. Recipes appear to be from instructors at the college and family members. The description for this...

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Food Friday: Tomato Appetizer

I had been thinking of doing something fun on Fridays featuring community cookbook recipes.  The title Funky Food Friday seemed appropriate but I decided that I didn't want people to feel insulted in case they enjoy the recipes I feature. But let me just say that each Food Friday installment will feature more unusual recipes.This first installment...

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Community Cookbook Contributors Aren't Always in the Same Community

Typically, when we see a community cookbook, the contributors are those who are somehow a part of the local community.  They all attend the same church, their kids go to the same elementary school or they share a favorite charitable cause.However, one's community may be more broad than that.  In genealogy there is the concept of cluster research. Cluster research looks beyond the individual and looks at those who had contact with the individual ancestor, like local business people, neighbors, and midwives.  Our ancestor's did not...

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Using Cookbooks as Family History Books

Yesterday one of my Facebook friends posted a link to a news story about a family who took their family history and recipes and created a cookbook. (Read more about the story entitled, Family Records 160 years of History in Cookbook.)One of my cousins did something similar to this. She wrote a cookbook where she included a brief story with each recipe. Stories included the author of  the recipe, memories of that person and when they cooked the dish (for example it it was a holiday or a family favorite). As I looked through her cookbook I noticed...

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Menu from Camp Funston, 1917

 On this Veterans Day I want to thank all those who are serving and who have served in the military. Your service is appreciated.So thinking about Veterans Day and its precursor Armistice Day, I started wondering what people were eating during the World War I years. I came across a menu available through a digitized menu collection at the Los...

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Houston Presbyterian Church Cookbook circa 1883

Information about Church Cookbooks seem to be almost everywhere. Case in point is the inclusion of a page from a Presbyterian Church Cookbook in the book, Houston 1860-1900 by Ann Dunphy Becker (published by Arcadia and part of their Images of America series). On page 31 she has an image of a page from this cookbook, no other publication information is listed.  It also appears that the recipes from this cookbook may not have the names of submitters attached to them but it's hard to tell looking at only one page.The page the author used in...

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