To those who are just starting to learn how to cook, a recipe book or cookbook is definitely a huge help. But in today’s generation, you’d seldom see someone reading a book. Now, a recipe is just a tap or click away on our gadgets.
Actually, a cookbook is one of the most useful and informative “tools” in the kitchen that ever existed.
According to Wikipedia:
“Recipes in cookbooks are organized in various ways: by course (appetizer, first course, main course, dessert), by main ingredient, by cooking technique, alphabetically, by region or country, and so on. They may include illustrations of finished dishes and preparation steps; discussions of cooking techniques, advice on kitchen equipment, ingredients, and substitutions; historical and cultural notes; and so on.”
It is a product of brainstorming.
“Cookbooks may be written by individual authors, who may be chefs, cooking teachers, or other food writers; they may be written by collectives; or they may be anonymous. They may be addressed to home cooks, to professional restaurant cooks, to institutional cooks, or to more specialized audiences.”
How old are our cookbooks?
They are older than we could’ve imagined!
Recipes have been found on ancient Mesopotamian clay and stone tablets dating all the way back to 1,700 B.C. and have continued to be uncovered throughout history and even up to now.
Knowing the roots of the cookbook makes it even more precious than gold.
It doesn’t just teach a person how to cook, but it also does reflect on history. It is like a guide of life and the impact that it made for hundreds and thousands of years ago was emphatic.
We may be living in a world of modern technology but we can’t deny the fact that these vintage cookbooks are footprints of our ancestors. Most importantly, it shows the ancient ways of cooking food.
Sadly, cookbooks are now being overlooked.
Why? Because we now have smartphones, computers, and other high-tech gadgets where we could get recipes from.
Now, recipes can be found almost everywhere, and our beloved cookbooks are just getting dusty on a shelf somewhere, destined to age at libraries or maybe rotting on our own bookshelves.
I am personally guilty of this- whenever I cook, I just search for the recipe online. Cookbooks are badly preserved and are now forgotten, or are they really?
Thankfully, the Internet Archive has found a way to preserve even the oldest of the old cookbooks.
They are immortalizing these books by digitizing them online.
They can be found on their Cookbooks and Home Economics collection.
Over 10,000 vintage recipe books are available there.
No need to blow the dust away, no more flipping pages, with just a click away, you’ll have easy access to these ageless books from all over the world.
From American cookbooks, Chinese, Italian, Mexican, German, Canadian, and many more! Name it and they have it!
We’d also like to note how the books are designed, it features a real picture of a book and it shows an animation like you are really flipping the page. Isn’t that awesome?!
Also, if you are looking for a particular book, you can narrow down your search by selecting the appropriate year, topics & subjects, creator, type of collection, and language. You can also sort the collection’s view by view, title, date published, and creator. That is reading made a lot easier!
Our ancestors would be so happy to see that, finally, their old ways of cooking are now within reach to everyone living in today’s generation.
You can check the collection of these vintage recipe books here.
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