Not truly an "antique" yet, but my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook was my 19th birthday present and is still my go-to.

I recently got one just for fun, not antique but based on Mayberry RFD, called "Aunt Bee's Mayberry Cookbook." It was a hoot reading through it. Little snippets of scripts, character descriptions etc.

I would love to get my hands on some of the older Fannie Farmer cookbooks.

During ordinary times, you can get squab at some of the independent butchers, and some of the Asian markets, if you want to try some of the pigeon recipes without having to shoot your own birds.

I think I only have one truly antique book...or maybe almost antique. Close enough. It's a Passover cookbook, hardbound, put out by Manischewitz. I've made at least one recipe out of it, but can't remember what. Probably a cake or vegetable or both, or I'd remember better. :)

One of my favorite cookbooks is the Black Family Reunion Cookbook. This is a compilation of recipes from various families' reunions. Sometimes there will be three recipes for the same kind of thing, like corn muffins, but they're all different. I've made at least one corn muffin from it, and a bunch of other things. They're homey recipes for the kind of food you'd put out at a reunion, and written out simply, in the old way, with the assumption you know how to cook and read a recipe. The book isn't that old, but I daresay a lot of the recipes may be.

I also have a Texas Cowboy Cookbook, which is interesting to read, but I have not bothered to make any of the recipes. They are just way too basic.

The Picayune book also has a lot of recommended menus, but I have not bothered to read those yet. I do like antique menus, and I remember seeing some from the Titanic that looked interesting.

Creole and Cajun food is one of my favorite cuisines (my paternal grandmother was French Creole), and it reminds me of a lot of friends I had in Texas. I have also visited Louisiana and New Orleans many times and always loved the food I had there. I had my first pizza in Shreveport when I was fourteen. A lot of people do not realize that there are more Italians in New Orleans than there are French Creoles (but there are quite a few Cajuns). The original French settlers in New Orleans really did not like it (mainly because of the climate), and they were there mainly to control the Mississippi trade. They did name a lot of the places, including streets, but the Spanish who followed them were much more methodical with settling the city, and the wrought iron grill work that you see there is basically Spanish. The Spanish were better at giving out land grants, to make sure that the area was settled, but the French were really not interested in staying there.

This is what I was told by friends who were born and grew up in New Orleans, and so it is hearsay and may have been overly influenced by their parents and ancestors, many of whom were Spanish and Italian and not very many were French.

Anyway, New Orleans is a fascinating place to visit, which is why I've been there so many times. My parents went there for their honeymoon, which was shortly after Mardi Gras the year they married.

The Picayune cook book has a recipe for crackling that is pretty much identical to chicharrones, which I like but would never make.

Lars, I also had a Picayune Cook Book. I don't know that I ever made anything from it, but found it interesting none-the-less.

Edie, I too have my original BH&G cook book that is at least 60 years old. Falling apart it is.

I have my maternal Grandmother's Little Black Book... of recipes, most hand-written. Most are cookie and dessert recipes with only the ingredients listed.... no directions. There are also recipes: for treating Chicken Cholora; an eyewash one; grape juice; various pickles; and a bunch written in German, which I don't read. Quite fascinating to carefully page thru'. I've actually made several recipes and they have been quite good.

I have a couple of cookbooks put out by local church groups from the teens. And an Early Fanny Farmer cookbook....as well as my mother's Fanny Farmer which is early 1940's>
The "basic" stuff from those early cook books are the best....how to cook a beef roast, how to make an apple pie, and corn muffins. But also interesting in that they tell things like how to prepare a turtle for cooking and other interesting critters!

I learned how to cook pheasant from a cookbook from the 1940s, but then I decided that I didn't like pheasant all that much. I really prefer the flavor of turkey or duck. The Picayune book has a lot of duck recipes, and my brother in Texas used to shoot ducks, but I do not remember anyone ever cooking them. He also shot doves, and I do remember those being cooked.

One of my treasures is an 1896 autographed copy of "The Cookbook By 'Oscar' of the Waldorf." He signed it on the engraving of him (where the engraving is behind a tissue leaf as in the old style).

Oscar Tschirky was the Maitre d'Hotel at the Waldorf.

His book reflects the times of the 1890's. There are more than a dozen recipes for Pigeons in the poultry section, and different recipes for at least four species of Ducks.

Great kitchen guidance also, like how to get the salt out of salted butter.

My oldest, most decrepit cookbook that I still use is The Settlement Cookbook. We grew up with it.

I actually have a lot of old decrepit cookbooks, but that's the oldest one that I use the most. I've collected many, many old cookbooks and recipe pamphlets - some go back to WWI era. One of my faves is a Brer Rabbit molasses cooking pamphlet from the 30s with lots of gingerbread recipes and a great bran muffin recipe.

Others in heavy rotation are my Betty Crocker from the 60s that is literally falling apart, and Beard On Bread from the 70s, and every year at holiday time, my Cooking For Christmas from the 50s comes out.

And my mom has a reproduction copy of Charleston Receipts from the 70s - full of classic southern recipes.

One of the things I noticed is that instructions for baking occasionally say to move the pan around in the oven because of hot spots. Also, it often says to use tin pans, and I take this literally to mean a pan that is tin plated. I have a few of those, and they have different properties from other pans. I've not seen any mention of aluminum, and so it may not have been common back then. Tin has been used a lot longer than aluminum, but tin is expensive, which is why tin foil has been replaced by aluminum foil. Some people still say tin foil when they mean aluminum foil, but I personally have never seen tin foil.

I know that "tin pan" is slang for "decrepit piano," but obviously this is not what the cook book means.

Cookbooks are a favorite of mine. When I finally got rid of some a few years ago it was newer ones that I purged the most of. Now if I buy a newly printed CB it's usually about baking.

The Picayune Creole Cookbook is a good one as well as Larousse Gastronomique. I've used LG for making jam. If the day comes that I can cook out of LG without having to cross reference then I'll consider myself an accomplished cook. There is very limited instruction per recipe.

Most of the rest come from the 50s and up. Lots of James Beard, Hazan, Julia Childs, Junior Leagues, AND New Orleans. After baking I probably have the most NO and then Italian.

My oldest cookbooks are the two my Mother got when she and my Dad married in 1950. "The American Woman's Cook Book" c1949 and "Better Homes and Garden's Cook Book, c1941. It's funny, because they were my Mother's gift and Dad was the one who used them! Fantastic traditional recipes in both, although I had to google some of the meats in the American Woman's. Those I haven't used. The white sauce in the American Woman's is my go to with all the variations. and the BH&G has the best cake, frosting, and bread recipes.

I also buy cook books when I travel and at Estate sales, I bought two at one sale that was really sad. They are Junior League from Baton Rouge and full of clippings and hand written recipes. " River Road Recipes" and River Road Recipes II". I cannot wrap my head around the fact that no one in the family wanted them. They are falling apart and obviously used a lot and well loved. One example is handwritten, "Granny's Fruitcake" on the inside front cover.

I like the simplicity of many of the recipes in the Picayune cookbook, but then some are also quite complicated, especially the recipe for puff paste.

There are a lot of salad dressing and sauce recipes. One of the sauce recipes calls for calf's feet, and so I won't be making that one. I like that it has a lot of seafood and rice recipes, and I plan to try several of the crab recipes. The salad dressing recipes start with a simple oil and vinegar (they seem to like tarragon vinegar - might use a French vinegar I have instead), and then expand from there. Some of the sauces are the same way - like the progression from roux to béchamel to Mornay, but I tend to use velouté instead.

It's easy to see that people in New Orleans from long ago have been eating very well.

I learned to cook from the red plaid BH&G. Mine is falling apart and has a round burn from being set on a hot burner (that's how you learn, right?) . Joy of Cooking, too...the 70's version.

I have two most treasured books, a Granddaughter's Inglenook Cookbook that was given to me by my MIL. It's the one that got me started collecting cookbooks. It was christened by The Kid when she was about two and threw it in the dishwater trying to help me in the kitchen. The pages are wavy, but it's readable. The other is a 1905 Blue Ribbon Cookbook that I'd borrowed from our little old hobbit neighbor. He passed away while I had it and when I tried to give it to his family they let me keep it, complete with notes, carefully taped in recipe clippings and a folded paper with his killer dill pickle recipe that I could never duplicate.

Part of my job is to sort donated books to go to the book sale and I've found way too many treasures...community cookbooks from all over (I buy those when I travel) and all kinds of old ones that I can't use in the library's collection. They don't sell many cookbooks at the book store, so they're happy to give me first dibs. I borrowed a barcode scanner from work and I'm weeding them out and cataloging what I keep in LibraryThing. The rest will get recycled to the book sale....whether they like it or not, lol.

I still like tinned pans for baking. Tarts positively cry for tin. I have tinned steel loaf pans too, though most of my cake pans are plain. Too bad you can't get them retinned anymore.

My tart pans are tin plated.

You can definitely have items tin plated in Los Angeles - I know of several local platers who will do this, but as I said, tin is expensive. Tin plating costs as much a silver plating. Steel is more difficult to plate than some other metals, however. I've mostly had brass and bronze items plated but also aluminum. The aluminum needs to be machined instead of cast, however. Bronze is the best medium for casting and then plating.

Thanks, Lars! I thought it had gone the way of other metalworks where the environmental requirements pretty much ended it. It's probably not worth having my one loaf pan that's worn retinned if it's so expensive, but it's good to know it's actually possible.

here's a 1930s home recipe ... found it interesting to mix chicken and hard boiled eggs. Some Native American cultures/others don't believe you should mix the two in the same dish ... a little like the sin of cheese on seafood

I assume in Native American recipes that they were referring to turkey plus turkey eggs.

I make a chicken avgolemono soup that has eggs and chicken in it, but the eggs are not hard boiled. I do add hard boiled eggs to chicken salad, however. I also use egg noodles when I make chicken noodle soup or spätzle made with egg.

I rarely put cheese on seafood, unless I am making a wrap with tuna or salmon salad. I will also put Monterey Jack on crêpes filled with salmon or other fish.

Chopped cooked eggs and sieved cooked egg yolks were very popular additions to many dishes back in the day.

Martha, your comments about how the old recipes don't have much detailed instructions I think is an interesting observation.

I have browsed through many an old "how to" book and it seems to be assumed that one already knew how to do so many things.

Also, if instructions were included, they seemed to follow a different sequence of logic than most modern instruction. Now days I find that some instructions or recipes get so detailed that it makes the most simple things seem so complicated.

A modern recipe may read something like, "Add two tablespoons of oil to a skillet. Once it is hot, add the chopped onions and sauté until the onions are brown." That is the modern way.

A more old fashioned way might read, "Cook off some strong onion in a hot pot."

The same thing can be found in old sewing patterns. Those old vintage patterns assumed that you had some knowledge of sewing.

The newer patterns assume that you need to be told every little thing. The old vintage ones had often only one small instruction sheet as opposed to the sometimes half a dozen ones in some modern patterns.

An old fashioned pattern might tell you to construct and baste the darts, whereas a modern one will tell you to bring point A to point B and baste. Point A and point B are useless designations unless you realize what the objective is. Older instructions assumed you knew what the objective was and that you knew how to meet that objective.

I find a lot of modern instruction to be almost too laden with minutiae or precision. However, on the other hand, the logical progression in the old instructions seem, somehow, to defy our modern sensibilities of how it should progress.

For myself, I like to know first what the objective is. Knowing where you are going with something is key to getting there.

Writing instructions that will allow someone to do this or that is way more complicated than it seems at first look. I have found this when writing out some my kitchen knowledge to share with the kids. That is why some will have others test out the recipe or the pattern, to see if it makes sense or needs additional information.

I think that many newer recipes/instructions assume that you know not much at all and probably need a measurement of water to cook pasta, and instructions on how to fit a sleeve into an armscye by matching points on a pattern piece rather than understanding the concept of ease in a curved seam.

Sherry, I remember "River Road Recipies". I think I used to have a copy of that. I got rid of it. Maybe it is mine that you have?

Actually, I got rid of all my cookbooks. I didn't really need them anymore. I cook from 50plus years of experience. If I want anything new, I turn to the internet. Or, I can reach into my own head and draw out enough wonderful things to keep dinner interesting and wonderful and different for the rest of my life. Talk about fusion cooking! I can fuse years of accumulated experience from all manner of cuisines, all from my own up in the head resources.

Now my cabinet where they were is empty and that suits me just fine.

My kids would not have any interest in them and I did not need them. So, out they went. Now that is one less thing that they will have to deal with when I am gone, or that I will have to deal with before I move into smaller quarters.

When I am sewing, especially something that I designed myself, I always write down the instructions for construction, so that I will not forget in which order to do the assembly. This way I do not have to think while I am in the process of sewing, as I am easily distracted. When I made cardboard models of furniture, I would also write down the order in which I intended to assemble the models, unless they were extremely simple.

While in the furniture business, I would write installation instructions for chandeliers and wall sconces that I designed. Most people (especially in NY) liked my instructions (which were extremely detailed), but I think most people in L.A. did not read them at all, and sometimes they would call me for help.

I'm okay with cooking instructions that are either extremely detailed or rather vague, as I already know how to make most things.