Advertising Cookbooklets and Recipes

Since the mid-nineteenth century, recipes have been used to sell products. At first, recipes were incidental to the products advertised. Publishers hoped that readers interested in the recipes would see and buy the advertised products. As the century progressed, advertisers became much more sophisticated, and recipes often called for the use of the products that were being advertised.

In many ways, advertising cookbooklets reflect the broader advertising industry that developed in the nineteenth century. During the 1850s, advertising companies promoted products such as soap. As food processors became important toward the end of the century, the advertising profession turned its attention to selling brand-name foods and drinks, such as Quaker Oats and Coca-Cola. By the beginning of the twentieth century, advertising accounted for 25 percent of the total budget of many food processors.