Baking

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.

This promotional recipe booklet is a striking adverstisment for White House Cereals.  Most likely published in the late 1930's, the front cover is fashioned as a 3-D commercial food carton while the back cover displays their full product line.  Bright yellow and die-cut, this booklet was intended as an eye-catching calling card.  Die-cutting dates back to the Victorian era when industrial machines could mass-produce and print the same attractive shapes over and over again, like the celebrated Victorian-era Valentines.

"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 Nickel Plate Road Railroad Industrial Development Department published The Market Basket in 1949 as a tribute to its late but forward-looking President, John W. Davin.  Davin the saw wisdom in bringing fresh foods quickly and efficiently from the farm to the table via railroad freight at a time when post-war America was booming (and in spite of working America's increased reliability and facination with prepared foods).  This cookbooklet features recipes from the wildly popular fine dining establishment, Gruber's Restaurant of Shaker Heights, Ohio.

"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.

The Godey’s Lady’s Book was a widely read journal that pioneered the field of women’s magazines. When first published in 1830, it included mainly images of the current fashions, but later it expanded to include fiction, essays, and recipes. In 1870, the magazine published its first cookbook, The Godey’s Lady’s Book Receipts and Household Hints. The book is a compilation of featured recipes along with a chapter of household and cooking advice. The chapter ends on a playful note with a poem —each couplet is a cooking tip or proverb.

Fannie Farmer, who was born in 1857, suffered a paralytic stroke in her teenage years that forced her to give up her formal education at the time.  She eventually found an interest in nutrition and cooking.  She enrolled at the Boston Cooking School and did so well that she joined the staff, eventually becoming head of the school. She is still an important and recognized figure in the study of American cookery.

This pocket-sized booklet is part of a series of over 100 handbooks published by the American Topical Association, a philatelic society devoted to topical stamp collecting. Topical stamp collecting involves collecting stamps based on a specific subject or concept; examples are birds on stamps, trains on stamps, and people on stamps. There is even a club for people who like stamps on stamps. This book is about food on stamps.

(Cake ornamentation :78 modern originals) [Windsheim?] : Selbstverlag des Verfassers (Gesamtherstellung von E. Nister, Nürnberg), [1910]
Pattern book of designs for cake decorations. Designs for holiday, special occasion and seasonal cake decorations. with some Art Nouveau motifs. The final, unnumbered plate is an illustration of different fonts for alphabets and numbers used in cake decorating.