Advertising: Premium Cookbooks

For educating the public about new food products, premium cookbooks were popular with manufacturers and consumers alike. An early pamphlet such as “The Vital Question Cook Book,” published by the Shredded Wheat Company, was published in sixteen editions of 250,000 each by 1902. These promotional guides, cooked up in the test kitchens of companies who manufactured products like Tabasco hot sauce, Carnation condensed milk, Jell-O gelatin, Campfire marshmallows, Nestlé’s chocolate, and Campbell’s soup, influenced the cooking of several generations. The Campbell Soup Company alone sold more than a million books per year during the 1950s, with the result that sales of condensed soup destined for inclusion in these recipes increased to an estimated 1 million cans per day. Without Campbell’s book Cooking with Condensed Soup, America may have never learned to cook Heavenly Ham Loaf or Green Bean Bake (green beans, cream of mushroom soup, and a can of french fried potatoes), to say nothing of Perfect Tuna Casserole.