Ingredient-Based Cookbooklets

Many food products, however, were new creations or inventions and had no generic equivalent. In these cases manufacturers had to create a demand for their products. Also, housewives had to be shown how to use these products. As these were showcase recipes, they were often developed by professionals. Two successful early examples include the Shredded Wheat Company and the Genesee Pure Food Company. The Shredded Wheat Company produced a series of advertising cookbooklets provocatively titled The Vital Question (1899), featuring dozens of creative uses for shredded wheat; the Genesee Pure Food Company published cookbooklets that included a wide variety of recipes incorporating Jell-O.