Royal Baker and Pastry Cook

The Royal baker and pastry cook: a manual of practical receipts for home baking and cooking by the Royal Baking Powder Company has become a royal mess.  Promotional cookbooks like this were never meant to survive; they were manufactured as ephemera to be distributed to customers on a local level to promote sales.  Their primary purpose was to advertise and promote their domestic usefulness.  (Helpful hint:  use baking powder to reduce the amount of eggs used in a recipe!)  This copy was provided to a Pennsylvania homemaker compliments of Hall Kaul & Hyde Co. of St. Mary's and Ridgway, PA.  The heavily used cake and pies sections tell us much about the baker.  But for us now 105 years later, this temporal cookbooklet is an enduring testimony of 20th century material culture and culinary history.