I have a cook book that doesn't use oven temps. It just has low to high fire. I don't remember the date, if it had one, and it is packed away for safe keeping. It is a wild read. Not only does it have recipes, but everyday help for a housewife. How to make beds from straw or feathers. To chew on a burnt broom handle to cure bad breath. An onion in a bowl will rid a room of all germs.

I have one of those Better Homes and Garden red and white checked, but mine says De Luxe edition. The last date in the book is 1946.

I have Mothers first cook book. It was dated 1940. I didn't climb up to my cabinet to check the name. You can tell it was used daily.

I have my Grandmother's 1st recipe book. It was a gift she received at her bridal shower, in Aug. 1930. It's more of a "scrapbook" for recipes, as there are none printed inside. There are hand written recipes from then (1930) and some newspaper clipped recipes up to the late 1980's.

Most of the oldest recipes don't have any specific measurements, i.e. "cups, tsps" etc. Most all of them are hand written, and she's credited the recipe to whomever she got it from. There are a few there that are credited to my great-grandmothers! The book is in horrible condition, literally falling to pieces, but it's something I dearly treasure.

Curiosity got the better of me. I dug up the old cookbook. Mrs. Owen's cookbook & useful household hints. Date is 1892. The copyright is 1884.

I have my mother's handwritten cookbook but I transcribed the recipes and put them on my computer - her handwriting was not easy to read and the paper had become very fragile (she died at age 85 in 1993).

My oldest cookbook is my Joy of Cooking from 1966.

My favorite cookbook is my 1953 "Joy of Cooking"...held together with masking tape, with lots of handwritten comments. I inherited it from my aunt (an excellent cook) when she passed away in 1970. When I am gone, it will go to her great-granddaughter.

I just sent my grandmother’s Joy of Cooking to one of her other grandchildren. I think it’s from 1947, I’m not sure. But I do know it has a recipe for preparing woodchuck!

I have my mom’s 1967 Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I gave a current edition to a friend a couple of years ago. My friend was asking me about a recipe in the book, and referenced the page. Mine was on a different page, and titled a tad differently. And, the ingredients and process were different, but the end dish was pretty much the same. We looked at the introductions to our books, and hers explained that the means of creating some ingredients, the type of material used in some tools, and etc, had changed over the decades, and several recipes had been adapted to modern ingredients. For example, cocoa is processed differently now that when the book was written.

Have you found that you need to make adjustments, when you use the older recipes?

For as long as I can remember my mother used a Watkins Cook book copyrighted in 1936. They were sold by the Watkins salesmen who pedaled Watkins products door to door. Price $1.00. The books are hardback orange color. Mother's was well used and falling apart when she died. At a resale shop I was fortunate to find an identical one that is in much better shape. I wonder how that family could/would let it go. Edited to say that I still use the recipe for buterscotch pie.

It's actually a baking book. I put it in this ring binder about 20 years ago. So far, that's been holding up, even so the plastic has yellowed.

the rest of my books are on two shelves, according on how much I use them, some on the upper, and the rest behind a door at the bottom.

The oldest cookbook I have is a 'Searchlight' 1946. I think it was the only cookbook in the house when I was growing up - cooking wasn't one of my mothers strong interests. And the book wasn't all that helpful trying to teach myself to cook - we did have a minimum of kitchen techniques shown us in Jr. Hi. home ec.

I don't cook from it, there are no old family favs there. It's in a closet with some keepsakes.

I have dozens of cookbooks though, some I haven't looked at for years. I really should whittle them down, get rid of a few. Too many times, I'd become interested in a chef and buy their book, sit and read it like a novel. Result is I have scads of books with maybe 2 recipes in each I've tried and we've enjoyed.

Have a 1957 Good Housekeeping cookbook. Worn out from use, no spine, no book cover, pages show worn from use. But I'm discarding, as I know son will not use. Maybe someone will enjoy and use it.

Mine is pretty unimpressive by these standards, my mother's early 1980s Fannie Farmer, followed by her similar vintage Silver Palate books. Of books I bought myself, it is Julia Child's 1994 The Way to Cook. And yes, I still use the Fannie Farmer, quite a bit.

This thread inspired me to look at a couple of bookshelves that haven't gotten my attention in some time. I have the Lily Wallace New American Cook Book (1944), The Scottish Cookery Book (1956), and The United States Regional Cook Book (1947). All belonged to family members.

I have my mother's which is in a lined notebook and handwritten. I never look at it because we eat simple meals that don't require recipes. I could never in this lifetime ever measure up to her wonderful cooking.

Since I inherited many old cookbooks from my MIL I haven't a clue which one is the oldest. But she gave me a 1963 edition of Good Housekeeping when we first got married. A very basic and useful one for a young novice.

My oldest is one I hand wrote. It was a look alike "betty crocker" type binder for recipes that back in the day went on cards. I had graduated from the University preparing to leave for my first School Speech Therapist job 5 hours away from everyone I knew. I spent HOURS copying down my favorite of my mother's recipes. That was looong before computers or printers. I use it weekly and the duct tape job that has been keeping it together needs to be redone!! Now when my girls want those recipes I just take pictures and text them to them!! My handwriting is sooo bad I hope they are retyping them on their computers so when I am gone and the inevitable follow up text/call needs to come 'mom what does that sentence say' they have it!!

The oldest one I have is Das große Taschenbuch vom Kochen by Ludwig Schmidseder, 1964, but I did not get it until 1970, I think. It is paperback, and so it is coming apart, somewhat. After I bought it, I decided that I did not like German food, and so I very seldom use it. The recipes are very short and not very detailed, but there are a lot of them. I have another German cookbook that I got more recently, and I use that one a lot more. Its recipes are very detailed and there are pictures, which is helpful.

My oldest is a Victory cookbook from WWII. I learned to cook from that book as a teen in the 1960's. I thought some of the paragraphs were confusing, talking about shortages of foods etc. I did learn the basics there. I took it with me when I had to settle the family estate.

I also still have ( and use) the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book circa 1965. The cookies and pies are very good. It is odd to see how old and brittle the pages are. Surely, it cannot be that ancient!

My oldest cookbook is also a plaid BHG I inherited from my mom, dated 1947. She only learned how to cook in her 30's as she grew up and lived in the far east and had servants. It wasn't until she moved here right before the war that she learned how to do anything more than boil water :-)

It was the only cookbook she ever owned. It is now 2-3 times its normal size as it is stuffed with handwritten recipes and newspaper and magazine clippings she gathered over the years, many from friends. I can always tell the ones she got from any of her bridge groups as they are often written on a bridge score pad !! I seldom use any of the BHG recipes printed in the book but it is a treasure trove of recipes for dishes mom prepared that I grew up with and loved.

When I downsized and moved, I got rid of a lot of my own cookbooks. No longer had a family I needed to cook for and other than baking, I don't use many recipes. And now with the Internet, you can find any recipe you want online!! I did keep my Joy of Cooking, received as a wedding present in 1980, 2 Silver Palates, a British cookbook (with amazing photos) and a couple of junior league cookbooks gifted to me by my SIL (Pasadena Prefers). And my mom's venerable old BHG :-) I also have a big file folder of recipes I've collected myself over the years, most from family and friends.

I have taken a page with favorite recipes from my BHG and scanned and printed them for fear of losing the crackling old pages. I think my pages dried out a bit because we had a house fire that did not affect the kitchen but there was heat and smoke throughout.

My Joy of Cooking cookbook is from 1984, and I bought it as a general cookbook. I did find that most of the recipes had too much salt in them, and so I learned to reduce the salt by half in many of them, especially the vegetable recipes.

I bought Diet For a Small Planet in 1972 and used it for a few years. I also have Cooking with Gourmet Grains from the Orowheat Bakery, 1972, and I used this book extensively when I was a baker at a restaurant in San Francisco in the 1970s. I had to multiply the recipes by six to make large enough quantities for the restaurant.

I have several versions of the Better Homes cookbook, the oldest, a ring binder, I finally had to let go after the flood. I had gotten it at a yard sale, and it originally had belonged to a lady who did a lot of entertaining and she had included many pages where she copied down menus that she had served to guests, with notes, etc. It reminded me of our neighbor, Mrs. Laycock, who had kept a journal of every meal she had served for many years. She had been married to a commander in the Navy and while he was away, she went to cooking school. The food she cooked was very exotic compared to what I was used to. When my parents went away for a trip, I stayed at their house, and while I loved her dearly, I had a very hard time eating her cooking.

However, my favorite cookbook is a 1952 Quaker cookbook, from the Quaker Yearly Meeting. It belonged to my mother, and growing up, it was the first cookbook I ever used. I loved it. It had my mother's hand written notes, and mine too, added recipes, and splattered with cake batter. I had the cookbook after my mother died, but it disappeared during a time my sister was staying at our place in Liverpool. I paid $55 for one I found on Amazon. Lost it in the flood, and bought another one on Ebay. It is not the same without my mother's notes, but nostalgic to me, just the same. I have a lot of cookbooks....not as many as pre-flood, but a lot. I seldom use them for recipes, however, I just re-bought a Betty Crocker cookbook from 1980 that I liked for cookie recipes, lost it and bought it again.

There are other cookbooks that I have bought again that were favorites.

I have an old Better Homes & Gardens Red/white book too...dated 1959..it

was my Mom's. Not sure when she got it. I also have a paper backed one with some really strange

recipes...with lots of eggs, milk, and everything fattening recipes. LOL It

is marked "Best Recipes from the Farms of Michigan". Not sure who had it,

not sure it is old enough to be my Grandma's, but too old to be my Mom's.

Oldest I purchased: Doubleday Cookbook, copyright 1975. Bought in 1982 for my first apartment. I liked it because it covered the whole gamut of cooking and baking. I have a dozen pages marked with favorite recipes, and I still consult it periodically when trying new things.

Oldest by publication date: Anyone Can Bake - Royal Baking Power Co, 1928. My grandparents had this book tucked away in the bottom of their pantry. I don't know where that copy is now, the one I own came from a used book store ten or so years ago. The recipes are still good (Hot Molasses Cake is one of my very favorite desserts, ever). It's fun to see how baking methods have changed over the years.

My oldest cookbook is the Betty Crocker book my mother gave me when I was in my early 20’s. It replaced the one she’d given me when I was 17 because I lost it along with everything else during a flood we had. I still use it and now that she’s gone I treasure it even more. I’m amazed at some of the posts and how old the books you have are. What treasures.

I have my mother’s cookbook from 1946.

OklaMoni, DH tells me Fraktur, the printing in your cookbook, was done away with at the beginning of WWll so it predates 1939 but yours looks way older. I looked it up and the first cookbook was published in 1912.

I have a cookbook from the early 1700's in my Kindle. I will have to look it up. I used to own a very old cook book from that era but it burned with my house. No organization to recipes and no standardized measurements. All teacups and lumps the size of.

My oldest is The Vegetarian Epicure, from my 1970s-80s vegetarian phase, and I still use some of its recipes. They are all excellent!

My mother married in 1935 and used only one cookbook- The Settlement Cookbook: The Way to a Man's Heart. I was so surprised to see an early 1940s version on my friend's bookshelf and commented that it was the one my mother had. She gave it to me to take home as she had bought it in a resale shop just because it looked old. That cookbook has wonderful recipes in it. I received the red check cover Betty Crocker cookbook as a gift from my aunt about 1957 since I was now my father's chief cook. When I married in 1965, I bought Fannie Farmer's cookbook and Joy of Cooking.

My oldest cookbook is called "The Cookie Jar" and my grandma gave it to me when I was a child in 1995. She wrote me a note in it and it's a prized possession! I'll have to ask her to see if she remembers!

Thank you everyone for all the loving emails. They have brought me to tears and so many remembrances of cooking and family meals and treats. I found another one that had belonged to my mother from the Sisterhood of a synagogue in Vancouver, BC, The cover is gone, but it has to be from 1940 or later. Many of the recipes name the country of origin and reflect the various countries of the refugees that settled in the Pacific North West in 1900 - 1930's.

My mother and her sister-in-law would do a day trip from Seattle to Vancouver to shop for English china - tea cups, plates and chochkees (nick-nacks) for their homes and gifts. They also brought home delicious fancy pastries from the Bon Ton Bakery - that we would snitch out of the boxes in the old chest freezer. Mom would have company and go to serve the pastries and find only one or two left in the box. It never occurred to us that she would figure out who took them. lol I still have and use many of her tea cups and have shared others with the younger generations.

I never realized that our old cookbooks serve as a personal history of our families.

My mom had The Settlement Cookbook, AKA, The Way to a Man's Heart. Her's was the 1950 version and I think every Jewish bride, if they lived anywhere near Milwaukee, received it as a wedding gift. I loved using it, and when I found a 1928 version at a tag sale, I bought it for my own. Besides the great recipes, there were tips about housekeeping. In the back are ads from companies that helped to sponsor the book. Mine has an ad for a stove, the latest thing, that uses gas -- so you don't have to stoke it with coal or wood.

Another old cookbook that belonged to my mother, and got ruined in the flood, was a paperback called The Southern Cookbook by Marion Brown. It had my favorite waffle recipe. I intend to buy that one again, too. I believe it was from the '50's.

Socks, I also have that book. Picked it up at a flea market for $1. I also have a first edition Betty Crocker from 1950 and a first edition BGH also from 1950. I have several different versions of each of these books and reference them often.

I have a lot of cookbooks and would have to look through to see which is the oldest.

I previously posted about my 1953 "Joy of Cooking" cookbook, but just realized my oldest cookbook is the "American Woman's Cookbook", published by Sears in 1950. It is a two-volume set.

Wanda, I have an edition of the Vincent Price Cookbook, brown cover with gold printing, published in 1965. I came as a freebie with an appliance from Sears! Not sure which one but used it for years. Maybe I will come across it when I clean out two boxes of old books.

ophoenix, it’s called A Treasury of Great Recipes By Vincent and Mary Price. It’s a fabulous book! I can’t believe you got it free! I also have the 1965 edition. There was a 50th anniversary re-release.

dees, now I will have to search all the places it might be. I never throw out a book, but do donate them - tomorrow I will start the search. Thanks for the heads up - I did use it but at the time was sort of busy with three boys under 6 years! Cooking was for survival, not culinary adventure! lol

ophoenix, I do hope you find it as you will see it with a different set of eyes now. I've not cooked from it yet but am taking my time reading it.

I think it might be grandma's 1944 Settlement Cookbook.

I also have the paperback of Erma Bombeck's I Hate to Cook Book, which I bought back when I was in school. But truth be told, I almost never use cookbooks now. I just google the word "recipe" with whatever I want to make, or sometimes, whatever I have on hand.