Cookbooks: Manuscript Cookbooks: Common Characteristics

Although each cookbook is an individual record of some aspects of a woman’s life, many have characteristics in common. The manuscript is often anonymous: no date, no name, no town, simply a collection of kitchen wisdom compiled by a woman whose major priority was taking care of her family. These books have been well used, pages stained, brown with age and spilled food, some frayed at the edges. In the center of a worn copybook a child has scribbled a mysterious drawing. A neatly bound nineteenth-century volume includes a calendar from a farmer’s almanac pasted inside the front cover. Handwritten comments are attached to some recipes: “Very nice,” “Tried and didn’t like it,” “Add more milk.”