Uh oh! Now I know what I'll be doing with some of my spare time. What a great site. I love old cookbooks, too. My favorites are the ones with writing all over the pages and newspaper clippings and letters tucked inside as well.

Thanks for sharing this.

seagrass

Thanks for posting this site ... I too love old cookbooks, I have several that I have bought at garage sales, library sales and even curbshopped :) The ones with the handwritten notes are the best !

The most interesting part of some old cookbooks is trying to figure out quantities. I have some from the late 19th and very early 20th centuries. They often used obscure units of measure "take a stone of green tomatoes and a half stone of cucumbers," or used quantites like "2 cents worth of pickling spices and a half-cent worth of alum."

How do you convert those to today's measures? The only way I've really found is to compare to as similar as possible a contemporary recipe.

Great link-that's for sharing!

I have a copy of the 1886 Dept. of Agriculture report I found at a used book store (it's got a great summary of the devastating cottony cushion scale). The thing was used as a notebook for someone--it's full of turn-of-the-century clippings from newspapers and magazines about how to keep house as well as recipes. There are also some handwritten ones. They all look terrible. I should scan them.

There was a previous thread on this including a bit of discussion on the language of old recipes. Names for some ingredients change as well as measures. Never the less, the books are interesting.

I was looking through some the other day because when playing patty cake with my granddaughter, my son questioned what kind of cake would be patted and pricked.

Here is a link that might be useful: previous thread on Feeding America

thanks Mom, I just love Michigan State University, my own beloved "Moo U". It's the state agricultural college and has absolutely the best canning and preserving site too.

I'm bookmarking this one....

Annie

I fell right into La Cuisine Francaise. I love the directions like... 1/2 a calf's head, a handful, cook for awhile.... "and NEVER FORGET" is simply priceless advice.

This is so my kind of cookbook.

: )
lyra

They still use stone as a measure of weight in the UK. (Ever watched the biggest loser UK?) One stone = 14 pounds.

Thanks. That site looks like a real treasure.

Thanks so much for posting that. I now have it bookmarked. I know what I'll be doing with my *spare* time!

Boo

I remember the other post, I probably posted to it. I was sitting around feeling sorry for myself with a cold last week and had a great time browsing the site looking through the old cookbooks, so I thought I'd re-post the site. With all the storms and flu and colds, it's a great way to spend an afternoon if you're feeling bad or trapped in the house.

mom, some things are just worth repeating.

thanks so much for the link, i too have bookmarked it. what great reads.

maryanne

Thanks for the link. I browsed some of the pages of the Italian cooking.

The chapter on "What I know about egg beaters" was a really good read. Normally I don't like to read old cookbooks, but this one was very quaint and colorful.

Lars