When the Cookbook was more than food...
I distinctly remember a time in my youth when my mother would need the recipe for something other than food, like say the antidote for poison snake bites, and she would turn to one of her tattered and busted up cookbooks for the answer.
The best part of the "old cookbook" as an entity was the encompassing role it played in our lives. It contained more than just food recipes...it contained matters of family importance, newspaper clippings of other recipes and people in our lives, life principles like little scriptures and positive quotes, homeopathic remedies, and recipes for bug repellants. It was a better representative for my childhood than the picture albums that contain the visualization of my adolescence.
I think that’s what might be missing from today’s cookbooks….life. Sure they have great food recipes, and some even have great advice for how to use that left over stick of butter to get into your tight blue jeans. But, the day to day…spattered, worn out document that were my Mother's cookbooks – they don’t sell those on the market. You need to find those books at your local Junior League or Women of the Church cookbook. Books-a-Million and Barnes & Noble don't carry them.
Comments
On Dec 5 at 10:54 AM said:
Coul there be a market for old cookbooks with drips of sauces and tattered edges, because I have all my mother's and grandmother's old cookbooks. Although, to me, they are priceless!!
On Dec 5 at 10:54 AM said:
I agree completely. I have kept all the family cookbooks and found some at yard sales as well. I do not however have one with homeopathic and poison notes. I want one of those! For that matter, if anyone knows a "cookbook" of natural herbs, spices, and lore for the Southeast, please let me know. I will buy it. I know a little about that stuff.. maybe I should research and write it... hmmm ;-)
On Feb 1 at 08:35 PM mj atchison said:
I have my father's mother's "receipts" as she called them. She wrote in her recipe book margins - birthdates, when family and friends visited, when they were sick, etc. It is almost like a diary and so wonderful to go through the books and read the notations, as well as newspaper clippings. My mother's mother put notes with her receipes, of course they were dripped upon and smugged. I especially cherish the recipes she wrote in her own handwriting for me when I was young and starting out. My sons ask that I write some of their favorite recipes for them which I am, however in the process of doing so I decided to copy recipes that their grandmothers and great grandmothers wrote in their own handwriting with a photo of them so they will know remember and be able to put a loving face to the women in their life that gave them these wonderful "receipts."
On Jun 12 at 10:52 AM Helene L. Zukof said:
I have a 1908 Rumford Cookbook that must have been given out or sold by Rumford Baking Powder. In it is a chapter called Recipes for The Sick. My husband, who is a physician, and I have laughed at some of the remedies and practices, but most of them reflect good old common sense and accepted practices of the time.
On Nov 20 at 07:44 AM said:
ineedarecipeforsweetpotaocake
On Dec 5 at 10:54 AM said:
I'm not in love with the new cookbook, the iPod. Recipe's lose their luster when you have to scroll through them.