Vintage Recipe Books

[Morning Glory]

Do you collect or own vintage cookery books? Perhaps you inherited them or maybe (like me) you are old enough for the books you purchased new to now be vintage! Do you still use the recipes. I have a number of books which are vintage to me from the mainly, Victorian or early to mid 20th century. I use them mainly for ideas rather than following recipes.

I'll try to dig them out to photograph and maybe post a recipe or two.

 

[Morning Glory]

Here is an example. This book was published in 1944 so its war time and rationing. I think its a book aimed at quite a 'middle class, well heeled' readership as there are recipes for cocktails and appetisers etc. The section on herbs contains more varieties than I would have expected from that period. Grlic for example is included - yet you will hear many people say that in the UK garlic didn't become popular until the 1970's. My parents certainly didn't use it and you would have been hard pushed to find it anywhere on sale.

There is also a section on Jewish cookery which I found unusual as I've not come across that in other British cookbooks of that era. I may start a new thread about that...

 

[Francesca]

@morning glory,

My mom and mom in law have quite a collection of Vintage Cookbooks dating back to 1936 ( a very strategic year on the Ibeiran Peninsula; on the positive, the 1st Gourmet Magazine was published, Club Gourmet and it is still publishing in print and the negative, the start of the Spanish Civil War ).

I have some 2nd hand cook books which though are not really "Vintage", they date back to the early 1980s.

I do have however, have the books of both my grandmothers´ recipes, which one day, I hope to publish.

Fabulous post !!!

All my best for a lovely evening ..

 

[jennyb]

Does Delia from the 1970's count? I have a few of those. Also an early Ken Hom. He made Asian cooking popular in the UK before anyone else I think.

 

[Francesca]

@morning glory

My Mom had done a mini search for Vintage Cookbooks she has, and here is one from 1966 in English that she picked up at a Flea Market in the 2nd hand Book Stalls in 1966 ..

Thanks to Mom .. The copyright is 1966. Some expatriates must have decided that they did not need it any longer. Mom said, she will show it to me when I get home .. It is in excellent condition ..

 

[Morning Glory]

@morning glory

My Mom had done a mini search for Vintage Cookbooks she has, and here is one from 1966 in English that she picked up at a Flea Market in the 2nd hand Book Stalls in 1966 ..

Thanks to Mom .. The copyright is 1966. Some expatriates must have decided that they did not need it any longer. Mom said, she will show it to me when I get home .. It is in excellent condition ..

View attachment 10102

You will have to show us a recipe from it. Could be fascinating.

 

[Francesca]

You will have to show us a recipe from it. Could be fascinating.

@morning glory

When I get home tomorrow, I shall ask her to scan a few pages for me ..

Just made note, so I do not forget to ask her ..

I had forgotten she had some vintage cookbooks in English ..

I know she has alot in Spanish ..

Have a lovely day and shall send a couple of pages tomorrow ..

 

[Francesca]

@morning glory

My Mom had done a mini search for Vintage Cookbooks she has, and here is one from 1966 in English that she picked up at a Flea Market in the 2nd hand Book Stalls in 1966 ..

Thanks to Mom .. The copyright is 1966. Some expatriates must have decided that they did not need it any longer. Mom said, she will show it to me when I get home .. It is in excellent condition ..

View attachment 10102

@The Late Night Gourmet,

Amazing what people collect and / or save !

Have a lovely evening ..

 

[Elawin]

A lot of the old recipes I have are from some encyclopaedias that belonged to my Grandad. These are the type of encyclopaedias that were sold in weekly parts, except in those days you could get them properly bound instead of buying those awful binders to put them in. I say these are from the 1920s but they may be earlier - they were bound in 1923 (I still have the invoice somewhere!). The only problem is that most of them serve 40 or more people, which makes adapting them a little difficult! At the time one of my aunts (who unfortunately died way before I was born) worked in a large house - she actually did all the embroidery there, but may have been looking to add cookery too - and that may have been the reason my Grandad bought the sets in the first place.

I have a set of the Supercook ones from the early 1970s, from which I have some favourites, and a set of microwave recipes similarly sold in weekly parts from about the same time, although the timings are way out for modern microwaves. Thank goodness of conversion charts on the internet. I also have loads of booklets which were really manufacturers' advertising for their products. Free when I (or my Mum) got them, but now usually have to be paid for! That is apart from thousands of recipes cut from magazines.

I did inherit some books from my Mum. She used to cook in some of the London pubs and hotels in the 1920s and 1930s. Unfortunately the one book out of all of them which I really would have liked did not come my way. It had been repaired several times up until the 1980s when she sadly died, and disappeared shortly thereafter. I have a sneaky feeling my brother may have thrown it out.

My favourite cookery books are one from the Step-by-Step series by Marguerite Patten from 1963 (the first cookery book I ever bought), a set of Good Housekeeping books from the 1970s - The Best of Good Housekeeping, plus two of their freezer cookery books - and of course my Indian cookery book, my Greek cookery book and an Austrian cookery book, all from around the same time frame. I also have a Chinese cookery book by Kenneth Lo, and a South East Asian one. All of these have been well used and are rather tatty now. Indeed a couple of them are held together with elastic bands, and the Chinese one has a page missing! The Milk Marketing Board's Dairy Cook Book (which I got free; one of the joys of being married to a milkman!) is in a similar state.

Other than that, most of my cookery books are much more modern from 2000 onwards. I do, however, have a fairly substantial collection of recipes which I have found online or as parts of courses I have been doing, and these are mainly saved to my OneNote. I also have a whole host of eBooks or Kindle books that I have bought, some of which are facsimiles of books from Victorian or Edwardian times, or even earlier in some cases. The number of physical books in increasing.....

 

[Francesca]

@Elawin

Exceptionally interesting ..

Have a nice evening ..

 

[Elawin]

The section on herbs contains more varieties than I would have expected from that period. Grlic for example is included - yet you will hear many people say that in the UK garlic didn't become popular until the 1970's. My parents certainly didn't use it and you would have been hard pushed to find it anywhere on sale. ...

Strange, because garlic has been grown in the UK since Tudor times (or possibly earlier). Like many herbs it was used in medicine, but I can't believe some didn't creep into recipes. I'll have to be a bit of research.

There is also a section on Jewish cookery which I found unusual as I've not come across that in other British cookbooks of that era. I may start a new thread about that...

That is even more strange. There have been Jewish communities in England since the 11th century. They must have been more secretive in those days than we thought!

 

[Francesca]

Strange, because garlic has been grown in the UK since Tudor times (or possibly earlier). Like many herbs it was used in medicine, but I can't believe some didn't creep into recipes. I'll have to be a bit of research.



That is even more strange. There have been Jewish communities in England since the 11th century. They must have been more secretive in those days than we thought!

@Elawin

I thought this was very interesting as well .. Many British people had risked their lives to save Jewish children from the "Nazi Ghettos" .. And as a matter of fact, a man recently passed on at the age of 104 years old, who was committed to saving these children. He succeeded and he hid all the documents and forged Passports for these children .. Upon his death, family members found all these documents and photographs. This was in 1942 - 1944 .. He attended an award ceremony before he passed away and the people at the ceremony, were the children he saved ( 700 - 1,000 of them ).
He cried at the ceremony, it was highly emotional as he never expected this ..

I have forgotten his name however, I just recently read this in a Spanish publication ..



Well, off for now ..
I must be up 6am as I shall be returning home tomorrow ..
Have a lovely evening ..

 

[ElizabethB]

A wonderful thread. Thank you.

I do not remember my Mother using cook books. Most of her recipes were hand me downs from my Grand Parents or things she came up with on her own.

My Aunt - Dad's eldest sister - traveled extensively and loved to entertain. She hosted many international guest at her dinner parties. I have some of her hand written recipe cards.

I had cook books from the early 70's but gave away many of them when I started collecting recipes on line. DUH! I still have a couple. One is The Complete Everyday Cookbook published in 1971. It was a wedding gift from my Sister. The inscription reads "Use with the utmost caution".

A 1977 edition of Reader's Digest Creative Cooking. Neither are exactly vintage but they are fun.

The most stained, tattered, frequently used cook book in my collection is a 1997 edition of Joy of Cooking. Not vintage but well used.

I have a couple of "just for fun" cook books. "Who's Your Mama? Are You Catholic? Can you make a Roux?" by Marcel Marceau. A combination cook book and Acadian history book. Lots of traditional lore and family stories.

Hooks, Lies and Alibis by John Folse. A large, full color, glossy page, coffee table cook book. As much history of South Louisiana cooking and fishing as recipes. John Folse is a New Orleans Chef. He also has a culinary school. I have used many of his recipes and enjoy reading his stories.

I love old books as decorative items but never thought of collecting vintage cook books for reference purposes. You have piqued my interest. I will start with family then search garage sales and estate sales.

@Francesca

Your story of the man who rescued so many Jewish children reminds me of the movie Shindler;s List. A beautiful, moving, fact based movie about a German man who gave everything he owned to rescue Jews during WWII. An older movie. You may not have seen it. If the subject is of interest you may want to watch it.

Have a good evening.

 

[Morning Glory]

Strange, because garlic has been grown in the UK since Tudor times (or possibly earlier). Like many herbs it was used in medicine, but I can't believe some didn't creep into recipes. I'll have to be a bit of research.

That is even more strange. There have been Jewish communities in England since the 11th century. They must have been more secretive in those days than we thought!

Well, this is just my personal observation. Of course I know that garlic has been grown here since Tudor times and indeed if you look at very early recipe books it will be mentioned - but then (perhaps due to the wars?) it seemed to lose grace and disappear from ordinary folks tables. I'm talking about the UK - not the rest of Europe.

Its very difficult to discuss ingredient use for 'ordinary people' historically - mainly because very early cookery books were written for the richer classes and the food eaten in big stately homes was very different from that which the average farm worker ate.

The Jewish thing is simple a personal observation - I haven't come across any old Jewish cookery books (maybe I never looked!) and the vintage books I own. don't seem to mention it. Perhaps there was more a tradition of handing recipes down in Jewish society in the UK.

 

[Elawin]

A wonderful thread. Thank you.

I do not remember my Mother using cook books. Most of her recipes were hand me downs from my Grand Parents or things she came up with on her own.

My Aunt - Dad's eldest sister - traveled extensively and loved to entertain. She hosted many international guest at her dinner parties. I have some of her hand written recipe cards.

I had cook books from the early 70's but gave away many of them when I started collecting recipes on line. DUH! I still have a couple. One is The Complete Everyday Cookbook published in 1971. It was a wedding gift from my Sister. The inscription reads "Use with the utmost caution".

A 1977 edition of Reader's Digest Creative Cooking. Neither are exactly vintage but they are fun.

The most stained, tattered, frequently used cook book in my collection is a 1997 edition of Joy of Cooking. Not vintage but well used.

I have a couple of "just for fun" cook books. "Who's Your Mama? Are You Catholic? Can you make a Roux?" by Marcel Marceau. A combination cook book and Acadian history book. Lots of traditional lore and family stories.

Hooks, Lies and Alibis by John Folse. A large, full color, glossy page, coffee table cook book. As much history of South Louisiana cooking and fishing as recipes. John Folse is a New Orleans Chef. He also has a culinary school. I have used many of his recipes and enjoy reading his stories.

I love old books as decorative items but never thought of collecting vintage cook books for reference purposes. You have piqued my interest. I will start with family then search garage sales and estate sales.

@Francesca

Your story of the man who rescued so many Jewish children reminds me of the movie Shindler;s List. A beautiful, moving, fact based movie about a German man who gave everything he owned to rescue Jews during WWII. An older movie. You may not have seen it. If the subject is of interest you may want to watch it.

Have a good evening.

I'm sure our parents and grandparents never used cookery books because they tended to have the same type of meals week in week out. The only time I remember my mother getting her cookery book out was in the run up to Christmas, for the cake, the puddings and the mincemeat rather than the actual Christmas meal. She also had some of her favourite, less frequently used, handwritten recipes in the back of that book and written on loose sheets of paper kept in that book, which was why I was so upset that it had disappeared. It was her first cookery book. I assume she got it when or shortly before she was married, so it would have been published in the 1920s.

@Francesca

That man was known as the British Schindler. His real name was Nicholas Wertheim later Nicholas Winton (and later still, Sir Nicholas Winton). He died two years ago at the age of 106. There was a documentary about him on TV, which is also available on DVD.