Here's a unique cookbook collection waiting for new owners to appreciate them. Last night, I found this pile of local cookbooks at Housing Works (157 E. 23rd St., between 3rd and Lexington) and spent almost an hour digging through them.
These cookbooks, produced as fundraisers for local organizations, are in pristine condition and represent a wide variety of locations and organizations. For $4-6 a book, this is a chance to tap into the food history of our country from the past half-century.
Does anyone cook from this type of local cookbook? How do they compare to the mass market, traditionally published cookbooks we usually talk about?
These cookbooks are great for traditional, homey fare and local treats. I have one put together by my old high school, in the 70's, and another from Columbia U that was put together during WWII -- a great flea market find!
I also found one for my partner's hometown in Western PA. One caveat: some of these publications are just customized covers for local fund raising, and the recipes are the same in each edition. Be sure to check the first few pages (or see if recipes are individually attributed) to get some authentic local flavor!
I too have a soft spot for local, glossy covered, comb-bound cookbooks being sold for fundraisers. All the wacky ingredients, high fat content, and flavor combinations make me swoon. Not to mention the illustrations done by grandchildren, which render these dishes in such excellent detail (complete with steam wafting away into the margins). My favorites are church fundraiser cookbooks!
EmmaC, I'm so glad you mentioned church cookbooks.
My grandmother got a recipe from her mother, who got it from her mother (we think) for Pa. Dutch Pickled Red Beet eggs that would have been lost if it had never been published in the Pitcher Hill Community Church Ladies Cookbook.
Community cookbooks are wonderful to cook from not only for their quirkiness, but they also capture recipes that would otherwise be lost to all of us b/c of senility and the ravages of time.
I think the best thing about this type of cookbook is that you know the recipe has been tried, tested, and used in real world kitchens by ordinary, everyday cooks. Buy one new from a church group or civic organization and you are helping a good cause to boot.
So nice to hear everyones enthusiasm for this kind of cookbook. Frank . . . great tip on making sure that the recipes are really local.
If anyone knows of a local organization selling a new community cookbook, please let me or one of the other kitchen editors know -- we can review some of them and, perhaps, send a few more orders their way.
I learned to cook out of books like these. It might explain my penchant for Southern-style home cooking and recipes straight out of the 50s and 60s when canned soup was king. My mother had your basic Betty Crocker and BH&G cookbook sets, but the true wealth of her collection was the multiple East Texas Women's Club and Central Pennsylvania community cookbooks from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Many of them contain recipes from my relatives.
You know they're truly local when they include recipes for pecan icebox cookies, green rice, and twenty different kinds of potted meat dips, or half the book is devoted to cabbage & potatoes. :D
I never see cookbooks like those for sale anymore...or maybe I just don't run with the right circles. So, I make do by stocking my shelves with regional cookbooks I find from HalfPriced Books instead. I've got some old ones from New Jersey, Texas, and Maine. :)
Verily,
What's green rice?
Since you mention both cabbage and PA . . .I grew up in PA and I'm collecting cabbage and noodle recipes -- some have carmelized onions, some don't, some call for sugar, others poppy seeeds. If you happen to come across cabbage and noodle recipes (weird, I know), could you tell me?
omg, and me too! (on the cabbage & noodles thing!) especially if you come across one that has egg noodles, cabbage and kielbasa and is baked in the oven
my grandmother used to make this for me (it was my faaaaaavorite) but her brain is too far gone from Alzheimers for her to remember the recipe, and after a thorough search of her house, I came up empty handed
I've been tryign for YEARS to recreate it from memory, but I just can't nail it down
Like halushki? My PA grandmother's version is insanely simple: egg noodles, butter, cabbage, onion, salt & pepper. Sauteed up the onion first in butter followed by the cabbage (in more butter). Then, you add the noodles and season to taste. :)
Whenever I visit my parents next, I'll dig into her 'The Great Radio' cookbook from Pottsville.
Green rice casserole is pretty much a broccoli & cheese rice casserole. I think my TX grandmother's recipe calls for velveeta and oleo. My family always has it alongside everything else for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
I wonder if farmer's market cookbooks are the 21st century equivalent of junior-league cookbooks?
The best I've seen is "From Asparagus to Zucchini: A Guide to Farm-Fresh, Seasonal Produce," published by the Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition.
Not only does it have a wide variety of recipes from different cultural traditions, it's organized by vegetable. Hallelujah!
I also have a soft spot for "The Indochina Mobile Education Project Cookbook" which is the source of my mom's potluck standard, vietnamese chicken (Thit Ga Nong)
I love love love these old fundraiser cookbooks. My personal favorite is the one from the Catholic church near the house I grew up in -- it's written out entirely in longhand in this wonderful grandmotherly script AND has little stick people illustrations!
These cookbooks are also interesting for providing an enthographic snapshot of a community. The Lutheran church cookbook I grew up with was heavy on Danish recipes (aebelskiver!), but since this was in California, there were recipes for adapted "ethnic" cuisines like Mexican and Italian, not to mention Asian.
Who's up for sending in some photos of their favorite cookbooks -- perhaps via Flickr -- and a few lines about them? Sounds like we should do a couple more posts about these.
Could you tag them "localcookbook" and let me know when they go up? If you don't know how to load pictures in Flickr, let me know and I can help.
Also, looks like verily and Ann know the kind of cabbage noodles I crave. I'm still hunting for more of those recipes and working to develop my own.
My late mother-in law,food scholar Sophie Coe, left her huge collection to the Schlesinger Library at Radliffe. But we snagged Talk About Good!, the cookbook from the Lafayette, LA Junior League--probably the best of these types ever printed. The southern ones are usually the best--you can substitute for the canned soup.