Cookbooks: Manuscript Cookbooks

Every person who cooks has a manuscript cookbook. It may not be a tidy copybook written in a fine Spenserian hand, as so many early American manuscripts were. Scribbles and indecipherable notes may decorate the pages. It could be a file folder stuffed full of clippings and handwritten recipes from friends. Or, in the twenty-first century, the computer may be the family cookbook. Whatever the system, a cookbook is highly personal, revealing much of the cook’s taste, family preferences, and skills, and it frequently opens a window on the life of the author.