baker

Baker's Chocolate in Dorcester, Massachusetts was in business more than 150 years before Baker's best chocolate recipes was published.  Baker's became a division of General Mills in 1927 and this booklet published in 1932, offers to its customers a history of the company, as well as, an armchair history of chocolate as the "food of the gods."  There are a slew of classic chocolate baked goods in here.  What baby boomer didn't have a grandmother that made fudge with nut meats?  Based on the condition of this cookbook, this may well be where your grandmother got the recipe.

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.

"Do tell me how you get your French fried potatoes so crisp and dry?"  Shortening was invented by Proctor and Gamble (yes, the soap makers) in 1910 as an alternative to tallow.  In the 1930s, Spry began an advertising campaign that would rival Crisco for decades.  This Spry cookbook published around 1936 by another soapmaker, the Lever Brothers, uses the then new and trendy comic book motif to cleverly advertise their product.

"The only bread baked at the Chicago World's Fair."  Wonder Bakery was the first major company to adapt commerical bread slicers.  Imagine the "wonder" that was inspired when they exhibited at the Chicago World's Fair in 1934 just a few short years after the slicers were invented.  The exhibition baked, sliced, and packaged bread on the spot.  The Wonder book of good meals:  World's Fair Edition was given out as a keepsake/advertisement to fairgoers.  It includes recipes for every course, as well as defining "whitchery," the art of making sandwiches.