cookbooks

Holiday Cooking with Hannah Glasse

The holiday season has kitchens humming around the world, whether it’s churning out a favorite cookie recipe or prepping a celebratory meal with loved ones. In the 1700s, kitchens in England regularly consulted Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy for tried-and-true recipes. Among Glasse’s readers was a food lover near and dear to our hearts: Smithsonian founder James Smithson. Whether he knew it or not, Smithson had a bit in common with Glasse.

Lowney's Cook Book

When you think of tempting chocolate treats, what comes to mind? Is it maybe… a brownie? The first known use of the word "brownie" for a dessert is in the 1896 edition of the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book by Fannie Farmer. But that recipe was for little molasses cakes, not chocolate. It wasn't until the 1906 version of Farmer's cook book that a chocolate brownie with a cake-like texture was featured. Chocolate brownies quickly gained in popularity across the United States.

And then came Lowney's Brownies.

The Original Picayune Creole Cook Book

“Other cook books have lived and had their day, and possessed merit, perhaps, but what one of them was it that was ever the embodiment of a time filled with romance?” asks the introduction to the eighth edition of this remarkable cookbook, a celebration of New Orleans’ cuisine. The recipes were carefully compiled as part of an effort to preserve traditional Creole cooking with the cookbook first published in 1900 by the Times-Picayune, the New Orleans newspaper. It became the definitive guide to Creole cooking and has been continually re-published in new editions, most recently in 1989.