Old and/or Classic cookbooks

Let's see. I have Vincent Price's collection of recipes. Plus Larousse Gastronomique. My most used cookbook is a 1980's version of the Fanny Farmer Cookbook.

I have my great grandmother's copy of the Boston Cooking School's cookbook, written by Fannie Farmer. I think it was published around 1910. It has all the old Cisco and wood stove ads, it just a prized possession of mine.

I always refer to it when I'm looking for substitutions or measurements. It also has all the recipes that make my great aunt's cooking taste so comforting. I love to flip through the pages and see if there's anything that I haven't had as a child, usually just for the memories but sometimes I'll cook it up. It's also the only book that I've found that comes close to my g-g's plum pudding recipe that I use every Christmas.

I also found this - some Vintage Cookbooks.

The old cookbooks pose one certain problem: all the quantities of ingredients appear there in non-metric system units, and this makes cooking some recipe from there a training drill in mathematics...

I'm not sure I've ever tried to make anything that had metric ingredient lists. That would just be too modern for me.

Edouard de Pomiane is my favourite 'old' food writer.
The Vincent Price books are quite a bit of fun as well - I've found them in Goodwills locally - which is where I found all my MFK Fisher's as well.

I had Dione Lucas's cookbook, which I've either lost or given to my daughter who's lost it. That was where I learned about French cooking, and omelets.

One I picked up somewhere is The Flavor of Italy, by Narcissa G. and Narcisse Chamberlin, with photographs by Samuel Chamberlin. Not the usual cookbook, in this one each page is headed by a photograph of the area, with a recipe for a classic dish of the region beneath it. The recipes are good, and very easy to read, although not laid out in the usual manner at all. And there is the flavor of Italy. This one has the feel of a minor classic to me.

I cut my teeth on the "Better Homes and Gardens" Cook Book, which I originally bought in 1959. Nothing fancy, but just basic stuff that a young person with no cooking experience could find useful. When it finally fell apart a few years ago, I bought an updated copy.

When Julia Child was the rage, I bought her "Mastering the Art of French Cooking". Never could get the hang of that one!

I have that Lucas cookbook Mama. Maybe you left it at my house.

I have those cookbooks too, phoenix! Now, what I really need is a real kitchen!

Well, I've got here (all in German, of course):
- '"Dr. Oetker's Fortuna cookbook for beginners" (1904),
- The new mushroom cookbook (about the same time),
- The sausage cookbook (same) [about the making and cooking of sausages],
- 'Cooking ahead' (four different books, from 1902 to 1905 about conserving and cooking the conserved food),
- several others from the thirties and the fifties.

I don't look at them quite often (honestly: I usually don't use cookbooks quite often), but some recipes are really worth to be re-cooked.

cjh - If that's my copy, please send it home. I really miss it. I have one bookcase devoted to cookbooks, but the supply is going as my kids take them. Everybody in my family cooks, even the grandsons.

I'm with you, Phoenix. Julia Child's cookbooks never excited me. But her cooking shows.....! For me, mostly, because she was so casual about it. I used to watch flecks of food spotting her more than I watched the other stuff.

I also have a spiral-bound Pennsylvania Dutch cookbook I picked up at a church fair years ago, and it's all about the church members.

CJhsa - a real kitchen? You can cook anywhere. I like to cook, always have, always managed. Today we hardly ever eat out, because both of us cook, and when we're not, somebody else is and inviting us over. The only new cookbooks I read I take out of the library. I love my old ones.

One thing more. A not-cookbook, called "Regrettable Foods," by Lileks. Photographs of foods that were a fad a while back. I remember my mother making some of them - she loved all the things you could put into and do with Jello. Really awful. Note the hot dogs in aspic.

Hey, that's one of my specialties!

Lol, mama, believe it or not, I was at a wedding just a couple of years ago, at a rather popular wedding spot (god knows why), and a variety of jello molds were served My grandmother also used to make wicked cocktail weenies, in some kind of sauce with grape jelly and mustard, served up all fancy in a chafing dish. Note: she actually was a great cook and baker, and ditched that recipe when tastes in Canada began to evolve a little. However, I did once revive the infamous cocktail weenies for a 50's-themed birthday catering.

We used to like to go to Cafe Fanny upstairs at Chez Panisse. Finally, when my parents visited, we planned ahead and got reservations downstairs. Unfortunately, my wife couldn't go, so a friend filled her spot (he wasn't about to miss that opportunity). Anyway, as you probably know, CP serves a prix fixe meal with few choices for each course. The second course they served was shrimp in aspic...argh...

While I still have fond memories of the upstairs eatery, my experience at this vaunted home of regional, seasonal cooking left a lot to be desired.

I'd have to say the wieners in hot grape jelly would have been preferable.

Ha! Just because I am the jealous type (professionally), I love to hear stories like that about vaunted restos that we were forced to study in Chefs School. The beauty of my catering biz is that it is all custom-designed according to the clients tastes. There is actually a great pizza crust recipe that I use at home in the 'Chez Panisse Pizza and Pasta' cookbook, which I really like. It uses a rye flour starter, and it is indeed delish!

Paul Bertolli's red wine and burnt caramel poached pears, from 'Chez Panisse Cooking' is also a staple in my kitchen, but I tweaked it a little, as it seemed to me to lack 'grace notes' in terms of flavour. He visited my Chefs School as a guest Chef and was indeed rumoured to have slept with one of the students....regular Anthony Bourdain, me, oh, the stories I could tell

I have the Fannie Farmer and the better homes and I use them all the time.

OK, cj, return that book! As I recall, there was a recipe for a cookie in there that Lucas was famous for.

I'm making fun of jello, but it seems to be making a revival. One of the things my mother did was whip cream with jelled jello, mold it in a fluted ring, and put berries in the middle. I did that a couple of weeks ago, and it did not receive such a great welcome.

Here is the address for an article that appeared in the Food Section of today's New York Times. It talks about some strange and not so wonderful things cooked up by various chefs. From it I also learned that licorice is not a taste, but a smell!

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/30/dining/30NOTE.html

Come to think of it, I think I ate shrimp in aspic once, too. very strange taste and feel.