Culinary Arts

Marie Martinelo.
The New York Cook Book.
New York City: 1892
Rare Book & Special Collections Division

Hinde Amchanitzki
Lehr-bukh vi azoy Tsu Kokhen un Baken
[Textbook on How to Cook and Bake].
New York, 1901
African & Middle Eastern Division

800 Proved Pecan Recipes:
Their Place In The Menu
Page 2 - Page 3 - Page 4 - Page 5
Page 6 - Page 7 - Page 8
Lancaster County, PA: Keystone
Pecan Research Laboratory, 1925
Rare Book & Special Collections Division

As the editor of Marie Martinelo's 1892 New York Cook Book reminds us, "The fashions of the cuisine, like those of the dress, are subject to changes." Nowhere is that so clear as in the Library's incomparable collection of cookbooks, including the many cookbooks in the General Collections, and, in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, the Elizabeth Pennell Collection and the 4,346-volume Katherine Golden Bitting Collection, donated by Bitting's husband.

Katherine Bitting, a food chemist with the Department of Agriculture and herself the author of numerous books and pamphlets about food preservation and consumption, acquired Martinelo's "complete manual of cookery in all its branches."

In addition to recipes, the book includes helpful household hints on such things as making one's own soap and ink; how to eradicate "household vermin" like ants and spiders with a mixture of hellebore and molasses; how to remove rust from cutlery (in the days before stainless steel); and how to prepare special dishes for the infirm such as tapioca jelly and wine possets.

Appended to this volume is a special treat: "Miss Leslie's seventy-five receipts for pastry, cakes and sweetmeats," temptingly illustrated with this chromolithograph of various fashionable desserts that once were common but are now seldom prepared at home by those who are health-conscious and/or pressed for time.

The New York Cook Book is one of a number of such volumes at the Library that have been consulted by, among others, film art directors trying to create an authentic period feel in their productions.