On a hot summer’s afternoon at an outdoor flea-market, I ran across a cardboard box brimming with dust-covered cooking pamphlets. The dealer was preparing to leave when I started to rummage through the box. I asked for the price. With sweat dripping down his face, the proprietor replied a buck apiece. I slowly started to examine them. When almost everything else was packed away, the dealer proposed fifty bucks for the entire box. "What a deal," he proclaimed without exuberance. Without any idea of what the pamphlets were worth, I counterbid ten dollars. To my dismay, he happily acquiesced.

When I examined the unexpectedly acquired cache, the outstanding characteristic was the diversity of the booklets. Some were unattractive with no illustrations, while others contained spectacular color engravings detailing how the food was styled and served. Some were a few pages in length; others were over one hundred; most averaged somewhere in-between. Some were small enough to fit into a pocket; others were magazine-sized. Some were just black and white; others were colorful. Some were rectangular; others were die cut. Some booklets were in bad condition; others looked as if they had never been opened. The only common characteristics were that they were smaller than cookbooks, larger than brochures and leaflets, and had soft covers.

Cookbooklets provide a Rorschach-like test for the culinary field: there are as many motivations for collecting them as there are collectors. Bonnie Slotnick’s interest in cookery pamphlets began as a child. Her mother had a copy of Butter-Nut Bread's Interesting Collection of Good Ideas, with beautiful illustrations of food and people. Bonnie treasured the booklet so much so that she framed and hung the original on the wall of her cookbook store in New York. It’s not for sale and neither is her personal collection of 500 cookbooklets. Jan Longone, cookbook collector and proprietor of The Food and Wine Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan, believes that cookbooklets introduced new products and cooking utensils and equipment to America. Cookery pamphlets, says Longone, are windows to our culinary history.

Barbara Kuck, formally the curator of the Culinary Archives and Museum at Johnson and Wales University, particularly appreciates the kitchen equipment advertising booklets, which show how to prepare food. For Johan Mathiesen, formally the proprietor of Food Words in Portland, Oregon, cookbooklets often are the only surviving records of cooking lore. His favorite community cookery pamphlet is Mary Ulmer and Samuel E. Black’s Cherokee Cooklore, which preserved local recipes that did not otherwise survive. Joe Carlin, cookbook collector and proprietor of Food Heritage Press in Ipswich, Massachusetts, started his collection of cookbooklets when he found some in a miscellaneous ephemera box at a used book store. To him, advertising cookbooklets serve as important milestones in the history of the companies that produced them. Cookbook dealer Meg Savilonis of Bee & Thistle Books in Greene, Rhode Island, believes that the advertising cookbooklets may—or may not—have been effective promotional devices when published, but today they are irresistible collectibles. Her favorites are the Walter Baker chocolate booklets and the Rumford Cook Books.

Unfortunately, no comprehensive bibliography of cookbooklets has been published. How many cookery pamphlets were published in what quantity is unknown. The Szathmary Collection of Culinary Arts in Special Collections Department of the University of Iowa counts about 3,000 cookbooklets and culinary leaflets. The Culinary Archives and Museum at Johnson and Wales University has about 10,000 paperback cookbooks and another 20,000 cookery pamphlets. I estimate that at least 100,000 cookery pamphlets and leaflets were published in the United States prior to 1960, and this estimate may well be low. I recently bought three collections of sight-unseen cookery booklets with only three duplicates among the more than 200 booklets.

My collection is divided into three major categories: charitable and community cookery pamphlets, such as those compiled by religious or charity groups; government published pamphlets, which contain recipes; and advertising cookbooklets that promoted particular products, such as those manufactured by the H. J. Heinz Company or the Campbell Soup Company, or cooking equipment, such as Agate Iron Ware or Waring Blenders.

Community and Charitable Cookbooks

American charitable and community cookbooks first emerged after the Civil War. The first known post-Civil War fund-raising cookbook was Nantucket Receipts, published in Boston in 1870, which was intended for sale at "the fair for the New England Hospital for Women and Children." The following year, three charitable cookbooks were published in Massachusetts communities and one in Grand Rapids, Michigan. These early works, like most subsequent charitable cookbooks, were printed in small quantities and sold locally. Their success encouraged other groups to compile and publish charitable cookbooks of their own, and a new genre of cookery works was created. These works were written or compiled by non-professionals and were intended to generate income for a particular community charity or religious group.

Most community cookbooklets sold few copies compared with commercial cookbooks. As cookery pamphlets were paper covered, many are in very bad condition, and some have not survived at all. As money making was usually the main reason for their publication, community cookbooklets tend to have few illustrations and rarely do they feature color engravings. The two best bibliographies for community and charitable cookbooks are Margaret Cook’s America's Charitable Cooks: A Bibliography of Fund-Raising Cook Books Published in the United States and Eleanor and Bob Brown’s Culinary America: Cookbooks Published in the Cities and Towns of the United States of America.

Government Pamphlets

Government pamphlets are generally ignored by culinary collectors; yet many government publications have excellent recipes. While tens of thousands of food-related publications have emanated from federal and state departments of agriculture, most publications are unattractive, badly written, and have few recipes. However, from an historical standpoint, many government food publications are extremely important. Cornell University Agricultural Experimentation Bulletin on "Recent Chinese Vegetables" published in 1894 contained the first Chinese recipes published in America. The 1896 Manual for Army Cooks featured one of the largest collections of "Mexican" recipes published in America up to that time. During wartime, many government publications were issued to help Americans deal with rationing and food shortages. Departments of Agriculture also published many books on canning and preserving food. Some of these pamphlets were written by culinary professionals who were famous for their commercial writing, such as Maria Parloa, Marion Neill and Marion Harlan. Other government pamphlets were so successful that they have remained in print for decades. For instance, George Washington Carver’s How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways to Prepare It for Human Consumption, was originally published by the Tuskegee Institute’s Agricultural Experiment Station in 1916 and the booklet has been regularly reprinted ever since.

Advertising Cookbooklets

I must admit that my favorite cookery pamphlets are those which promote commercial products. They usually sport excellent photo images, professional layout, and clear printing. These attractive booklets also have been largely ignored by food professionals and cookbook collectors. Some professionals nostalgically yearn for the days before convenience foods and labor-saving equipment took over the kitchen; to these, the advertising cookbooklets espouse crass commercialism. With some exceptions, few cookery booklets appear to be worth much, hence most book dealers ignore them. For dealers and collectors, the problem is one of understanding a complex and confusing genre. By far, this category of food works is the most voluminous. Thousands of promotional cookbooklets have been issued over the years, and no professional bibliographic reference has been developed to offer guidance through the morass.

Advertising cookbooklets have several antecedents. The earliest were almanacs with recipes. Advertising appeared in almanacs by 1809. Eight years later, health almanacs appeared incorporating advertisements lavishly promoting patent medicines and unusual medical treatments. Many health almanacs also published recipes, and some developed cookery sections. Likewise, temperance almanacs contained recipes without alcoholic beverages. Incomplete lists of almanacs with recipes appear in Eleanor Lowenstein’s Bibliography of American Cookery Books, 1742-1860 and in William R. Cagle and Lisa Killion Stafford’s American Books on Food and Drink.

By the 1850s, medical professionals were issuing cookery books and cookery pamphlets unrelated to almanacs. For instance, H. Burchstead Skinner, a physician from Boston, published several cookery pamphlets beginning in 1848. His American Book of Cookery, published in 1850, was a paper-covered work loaded with promotional advertising. The intent of medical cookery pamphlets was to promote manufacturers and their medical products as the housewife read the recipes. The recipes usually had little to do with the medical product being sold. The advertising included descriptions of products or services that the publisher hawked and, often, testimonials from satisfied customers. Patent medicine cookbooklets are most easily found from the years between 1880 and 1910. Two famous patent medicine cookbooklets were Mrs. Winslow’s Domestic Receipt Book published in Boston and the Ransom’s Family Receipt Book published in Buffalo. These booklets were issued annually from the 1860s to the early decades of the twentieth century. When the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 eventually proscribed their products and circumscribed their claims, the genre declined.

The advertising-cookery connection took on a different twist in England in the 1850s. Charles Elmé Francatelli's Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes carried advertising from manufacturers who sold food. In some recipes, Francatelli specifically recommended the advertised products. In the United States at that time, American food manufacturers produced generic products, such as flour and sugar, that were marketed usually in barrels, often without labels. These goods were sold to regional middlemen, who broke up the lots and sold smaller packages to local stores. Middlemen often placed their own label on the box or can. When the U.S. Patent Office began registering trademarks and slogans, the use of brand names and attractive labels increased. This was coupled with a drop in the price of paper and the invention of the rotary press, which made high-speed, low-cost printing possible. With the advances in color lithography and photography in the late 1800s, brand-name food manufacturers began advertising nationally through magazines and by publishing pamphlets. Customers were encouraged to request particular brand-name products at local grocery stores, thus generating demand. Local stores, in turn, were encouraged to purchase the product directly from the manufacturer. This eliminated the need for middlemen or brokers, and reduced the price for the retailer and customer. Beginning in the 1870s, food producers and food-related manufacturers established brand names and issued advertising cookbooklets to promote their products. The recipes in these booklets usually featured the company’s brand named product. These recipes often were picked up and reprinted in newspapers and magazines, and cookbook compilers often republished them complete with the original brand name in the recipe.

In many cases, the advertised products were simply the same generic commodities with new brand names. As brand-name products required advertising and more expensive packaging, they cost more than the generic product. Manufacturers had to offer reasons why housewives should purchase their particular product. Hence, the "new and improved" shibboleth became commonly associated with advertising campaigns.

Many other products were new creations or inventions and had no generic equivalent. In this case, manufacturers had to create a demand for their products. Also, housewives had to be shown how to use these products. Thus, advertising cookbooklets offered recipes incorporating the product. As these were showcase recipes, they were often excellent and developed by professionals. Early manufacturers turned to well-known cookery experts. For instance, Fannie Farmer’s first publication was The Horsford Cook Book, an advertising cookbooklet produced for the Rumford Chemical Works in Rhode Island. All recipes in the booklet were subsequently featured into her popular Boston Cooking-School Cook Book published the following year. Famous culinary authors endorsed the products and often published recipes using them in their cookbooks.

Advertising messages at first concentrated on saving time and energy. Then the focus shifted to economy and nutrition. In 1931, Favorite Recipes of the Movie Stars offered recipes purportedly contributed by movie stars. This suggested a new direction for advertising cookbooklets–using movie stars to push products. In 1933, General Mills’s cookbooklet Betty Crocker’s 101 Delicious Bisquick Creations As Made and Served by Well-Known Gracious Hostesses; Famous Chefs; Distinguished Epicures and Smart Luminaries of Movieland included many recipes signed by the Hollywood movie stars. Two years later, General Mills followed it up with Let the Stars Show You How to Take a Trick a Day with Bisquick as Told to Betty Crocker. Of course, the "as told to Betty Crocker" tag is disingenuous. Betty Crocker was the brainchild of the fertile imaginations of General Mills advertisers in 1922. The creation of a fictional character proved successful: Betty Crocker still graces the advertising promotions of General Mills, although she has changed her style of clothes and appearance over the years. Betty Crocker cookbooklets remain popular and the early works sell for a premium.

Betty Crocker was not the first fictional character intended to sell food products. Probably the first was the Quaker Oats pilgrim, who was originally trademarked in 1877. He first graced the label of a whisky bottle. The pilgrim was subsequently used to sell Quaker Oats, which was one of America’s first cardboard-packaged foods. But the company had a real problem. Oats were considered horse feed, so in 1891 the Quaker Oat Company hired several men dressed as Quakers to ride trains across America giving out free samples of their product at every stop. Needless to say, the advertising gimmick was wildly successful.

Other successful fictional characters were also created about the same time. In 1888, Chris L. Rutt and Charles Underwood bought an old flour mill near St. Joseph, Missouri, and began developing a pancake mix that contained all the necessary ingredients. Their resulting product, "Self-Rising Pancake Flour," was the first ready-mixed food sold commercially in America. Rutt attended a minstrel show which featured a tune called "Aunt Jemima." Rutt applied this name to the pancake mix. Like the Quaker Oat pilgrim, Aunt Jemima impersonators were hired to sell the product around America. While the "Aunt Jemima" fictional character is condemned today as a promoter of racial stereotypes, at the time it promoted trust, quality, and stature of the product. Today, cookbooklets that feature Aunt Jemima, such as Aunt Jemima’s Album of Secret Recipes published in 1935, and other African-Americana sell at a premium.

Other fictional characters emerged to promote the sale of particular products. America’s sweetener during the nineteenth century was molasses. As the price of sugar decreased, sugar sales boomed and molasses sales declined. By the 1920s, molasses manufacturers had to advertise to attract customers. Brer Rabbit was borrowed from children’s literature to sell molasses. Cookbooklets, such as The Personal Recipes of Brer Rabbit, remain popular today. Many fictional characters remain popular among cookbook collectors long after the companies that spawned them have disappeared.

As advertising cookbooklets were intended to sell products, many booklets were more attractive than standard cookbooks and were written much more professionally than the community or charitable cookbooks. Advertising cookbooklets included illustrations of the product that the advertiser was selling, the foods produced by the recipes of the company factory, and the prizes the company won at fairs and expositions. The companies that manufactured the products needed to be sure that the recipes would work and were excellent examples of how their product could be used. Hence, the recipes in advertising cookbooklets were usually much better than those that appeared in other cookbooks.

Companies circulated these booklets in a variety of ways. Some gave them away with their products by inserting them in the box. For instance, those connected with food equipment, such as stoves, refrigerators, or choppers, usually included instructions as to how the equipment worked, along with recipes for foods that could be prepared or served using the equipment. Others announced that the booklet would be sent to customers free or for the price of mailing. Still others distributed the booklets through retail outlets.

The single descriptive characteristic of advertising cookbooklets is their diversity. Early booklets were relatively simple black and white affairs with few illustrations. As time progressed, these booklets became more colorful and attractive. Most were filled with lively anecdotes, engaging advice of the era, and amusing quotes praising the products. The booklets introduced new color processing techniques in drawings and photographs. Color was used as an eye-catcher to promote products and whet the appetite for the depicted meal or recipe. Burbank, California cookbook dealer Janet Jarvits is particularly enraptured by the color lithographs. Some are so realistic, claims Jarvits, that it appears almost possible to step into the picture.

Many companies published cookbooklets. Baking powder manufacturers published innumerable cookbooklets, including the Royal Baking Powder’s Royal Baker and Pastry Cook, published during the 1890s, and Calumet’s Reliable Recipes, published during the 1930s. Some cookbooklets have remained good sellers. Although many collectors detest Jell-o, they love the Jell-o cookbooklets published by the Genesee Pure Food Company. These have some of the best illustrations, including some from Norman Rockwell, who was more famous for his Saturday Evening Post covers.

The recent spate of books devoted to cookbook collecting is both a reflection of the increase in popularity and an additive to hype interest even further. In less than ten years, six books on cookbook collecting have been published–all of which have paid some attention to cookbooklets. In 1990, Robert Allen included sections on them in his Guide to Collecting Cookbooks as did Linda Dickinson in her Price Guide to Cookbooks and Recipe Leaflets. Four years later, two books on cookbooks featured sections on advertising cookbooklets: Mary Anna DuSablon. America's Collectible Cookbooks and Mary Barile’s Cookbooks Worth Collecting. Last year, two additional books were published that dealt with cookbooklets: Bunny Crumpacker’s Old-Time Brand-Name Cookbook, and Sandra J. Norman and Karrie K. Andres’s Vintage Cookbooks and Advertising Leaflets, which contains gorgeous color pictures of cookery pamphlets and collectible paper items along with value ranges. While each of these works have flaws, they are a good place to begin to seek information about cookbooklets.

Cookbooklets present several special problems for both collectors and sellers. The first is storage. The booklets are often in bad shape, particularly if they were employed in an active kitchen. Hence, many booklets that were actually used have not survived, or if so, they are in miserable condition. As many booklets are fragile and could easily fall apart, they can not be stored on shelves. Their condition often requires special handling. Unlike most cookbooks, these pamphlets must be stored away in acid-free plastic containers in boxes or in three-ring binders. Most dealers do not want to spend the time to understand booklets, which apparently have so little value. Neither boxes nor binders are as attractive as bookshelves lined with old cookbooks. Moreover, most advertising cookbooklets promote products that have long ago ceased to exist. As the products have not survived, the recipes in the booklets are often useless. Even those which advertise products still available cannot often be used, as the products themselves have changed dramatically over the years. So for practical purposes, historical recipes are not easy to execute.

I enjoy collecting cookbooklets partly because of their historical content, their diversity, and their attractiveness, but also because of their low cost compared with old cookbooks. I acquired most of my collection of cookery pamphlets for under five dollars apiece. My most expensive have run between fifty and seventy-five dollars. Some special cookbooklets sell for much more. Some cookbooklets are famous, and their high prices reflect their popularity. If the illustrations in a booklet were done by a well-known artist, collectors can expect the price to be accordingly higher. The more colorful the booklet, the more expensive it is likely to be. Die-cut advertising booklets and those with moving parts are particularly popular collectibles. However, like all cookbook pricing, condition is crucial. Because of their soft covers and inexpensive binding, cookbooklets are particularly prone to losing covers and inside pages, which dramatically lowers their value.

While many cookbook collectors are interested in buying cookery pamphlets, the field is by no means limited to those interested in food. Collectors of advertising booklets purchase promotional cookbooklets. Likewise, many antique collectors also are interested in booklets about the kitchen equipment they have acquired. Crossover fields for cookery pamphlets exist. Some collectors specialize in ephemera produced by companies, such as Campbell Soup and Planter’s Peanuts. Price guides for collectibles originating from these companies have been published. David Young and Micki Young’s Campbell’s Soup Collectibles: A Price and Identification Guide includes cookbooklets along with prices. Some early Campbell cookery pamphlets are the most visually attractive, such as their Campbell’s Menu Book published in 1910 and their Helps for Hostesses published six years later. Likewise, Planters Peanuts cookbooklets are saleable as crossover items. Planters Peanut’s cookbooklets, published during the 1940s, sell from eight to twenty dollars according to Jan Lindenberger’s Planters Peanut Collectibles 1906-1961.

Flea markets still abound with cookery pamphlets, although their condition is not always good. As cookbooklets are plentiful, they are usually available at low cost. Many cookbook dealers carry moderately priced booklets and brochures. Some have good selections. Dealers at paper shows or antique shows usually have a much larger quantity and higher quality selection, but the prices are generally higher because of the items’ recognized value as collectibles.

The problem for the collector is how to locate particular cookbooklets; the problem for dealers is how to locate diverse groups of collectors who might purchase their inventory. Two solutions have emerged recently. Since 1988, the Cookbook Collectors’ Exchange, a bi-monthly newsletter, provides a vehicle for discussion of new and old cookbooks and cookbooklets. Launched by Sue Erwin, the exchange now has 500 members and is continuing to grow. No matter how many cookbooklets a collector has, reports Sue Erwin, there are always surprises. Free sample copies of their newsletter are available by contacting the Cookbook Collectors' Exchange at P. O. Box 32369, San Jose, CA 95152-2369. The second solution to the task of finding buyers or sellers is the internet. Many book dealers now have web sites. It is possible to search many book dealers sites through search engines, such as www.bookfinder.com. Using these search engines, it is possible to locate particular cookbooklets. For dealers, it is now possible to list titles, scan in color illustrations, and sell nationally.

Fifteen years after I acquired my first box of cookbooklets, I remain enthralled with their diversity and beauty. Today, my collection contains about 1,000 booklets. Many possess spectacular color-rich engravings of foods, families, and feasts: they are works of art in their own right. Others are dull, but historically significant. Still others brim with some incredibly good recipes. All cookery booklets are an important part of the culinary tapestry of America.