Vintage Receipts

Beginning at about age 6, I’ve had an interest in cookbooks. Starting that time, I began checking out cookbooks (children’s cookbooks, that is) from my elementary school library and public library. I was proud owner of an Easy-Bake oven. At age eight, I owned my first cookbook, featuring Snoopy and the rest of the Peanuts gang. And, though too young to make the recipes, I liked collecting the little tear-out recipe booklets that came in my mom’s Readers’ Digest. 

Since age 13, when my mom gave me a few of her old cookbooks, I started collecting cookbooks. I never set out to be an avid cookbook collector. In fact, today my entire cookbook library can still all fit on one bookshelf.

However, most of my collection is at least fifty years old. Taking junior high Home Economics, I became interested in collecting recipes, or, as some in my mom’s family called them, “receipts.” I kept a scrapbook of recipes found in magazines, newspapers, etc. During that time, my mother gave me several cookbooks she originally obtained secondhand during the 1940s to 1970s. As a result, my cookbook collection ranges in dates from the 1930s to present.

Now, with 21st Century technology, we have access to public-domain cookbooks published prior to the 1930s, courtesy of such sites as Archive.org. Many of these sites allow for downloading as well as viewing online. When I first discovered I could download these books in PDF format for free, I was ecstatic. But, after about twenty downloads, I realized I was lacking a good way of organizing them…or having access to them when I wasn’t at home. And, I wanted to share what I’d found with others.

So, I started Vintage Cookbooks as an offshoot from The Procrastinator’s Guide to Healthy Eating and Lifestyle website. That way, I could organize all my links for easy access, rather than keeping them hidden away in my browser as bookmarked favorites. Vintage Cookbooks is ever-growing, and links to various websites that contain scanned cookbook images, no text-transcripts. Books from Archive.org are embedded in viewers on my site, so books can be read right there.

After setting up Vintage Cookbooks, I wanted a way for viewers to participate. Hence, this blog. With such a vast volume of books from which to choose, many, such as I, may not know where to start. With this blog, I plan to feature a “receipt of the week,” that is, one of the recipes from a vintage cookbook. My goal is to try each “receipt” before posting, and, if possible, to include a photo of what I made. Any alterations, such as using soda in place of obsolete saleratus, will be noted. I also plan to have it available where others can post the cooking results of receipts they’ve tried from these books.

Enjoy!

Rochelle