Collecting cookbooks can warm your soul

By Karen Miltner
Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle

Vintage-cookbook collectors savor the differences between recipes of the past and the present. Gannett News Service

More often than not, the 34-year-old home cook finds inspiration in recipes that have been around longer than she or her mother have been stirring at the stove.

Ball's most tried-and-true tome is a fragile, butter-stained 1930s edition of "The Settlement Cook Book," first published 101 years ago.

"My passion is eating homemade food. ... I find in older cookbooks, you get recipes that are oldies but goodies," says the stay-at-home mother of two.

Beside the "Settlement" book, her spacious and tidy Pittsford, N.Y., kitchen holds titles with recipes from the country's first ladies, pioneer writer Laura Ingalls Wilder and Elvis Presley. There are also several Junior League and church cookbooks.

"They have recipes that feed a larger number of people," she says, which is a good thing because family gatherings often bring 20 or more hungry relatives to Ball's table.

Cookbook collectors cite different reasons for their hobby. Older generations seek out replacement copies of their cherished honeymoon volumes. Some cooks want the same books their mothers and grandmothers used.

Yesterday's recipes also provide inspiration for today's cookbook writers. As research for "The All-American Cookie Book" (Houghton Mifflin, 2001, $35), author Nancy Baggett traveled the country interviewing amateur and professional bakers and studying vintage cookbooks and family recipes. The result is a sampling of regional recipes updated to match the technology and ingredients readily found in contemporary kitchen.

Other collectors harbor more of a literary or historical interest in the books.

"I hear a lot of people say they can take a cookbook and read it at the bedside. There's something very engaging about reading the old recipes," says Laurel Wemmet, owner of Cat's in the Kitchen, a Canandaigua, N.Y., shop specializing in kitchen memorabilia.

Bookseller Joseph Carlin of the Food Heritage Press in Ipswich, Mass., views cookbooks as a vital window into the culture of a specific era. The study of 20th-century cookbooks, for example, highlights how certain ingredients (tropical fruits, imported cheeses, fresh herbs, organic foods) and technologies (electric ovens, frozen foods, microwaves, food processors) entered the culinary vernacular.

"Cookbook collecting is not so much about acquiring things of value as acquiring something that really appeals to the soul," Carlin says. "It's the quest that drives a lot of people. Going to the yard sales and rummaging through magazines and books and all of a sudden, eureka! You find this soup-stained pamphlet that fills a void in your collection and fills a void in the self."

If you're just starting a collection, narrow your topic. That's the advice of Jan Longone, owner of the Wine and Food Library in Ann Arbor, Mich., the country's oldest antiquarian bookshop.

"There's a difference between gathering books and building a collection. A collection has forethought," says Longone, who is also the curator of American culinary history at the University of Michigan's Clements Library. Subgenres can be as specific as Civil War military cookbooks, chocolate, Jewish charity cookbooks, British vegetarian cuisine or high-altitude cooking.

If you're planning to use the cookbooks in the kitchen, keep in mind that most volumes published before the early 20th century may be unruly to adapt to modern tastes.

Don't get obsessed over finding first editions or assessing the monetary worth. The real value of old cookbooks (whether they are the original publications, revised editions or facsimiles) is how they add to your knowledge and enjoyment, Longone adds.

As for what constitutes "old," that, too, is in the eye of the collector. While the first "Moosewood Cookbook" by Mollie Katzen is only 30 years old, it's a collector's item. That's because the 1992 revised edition slashed the amount of high-fat ingredients such as butter, cream and cheese that made the vanguard vegetarian cookbook appealing to a mainstream audience.

Poetry publisher Steven Huff of BOA Editions Limited began his collection at age 25 with a title by Julia Child. Over the years, he amassed more than 200 cookbooks. At 52, he's pared his collection to about 60 titles. Among them, of course, Child's 1961 classic, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1."

"Longevity isn't the point; it's living well. That's one of the many things I learned from her. She used a stove to enrich her life."