Old Cookbooks

There was a time that I wouldn’t buy a cookbook that didn’t have gorgeous photography on virtually every page. “I like to see what my food is supposed to look like,” I told my family and friends.

In addition to my hundred or so filled-with-lovely-photography cookbooks, I now eight or ten old cookbooks that range in age from fifty to
seventy years old. It’s fun to flip through the pages and find recipes like Pineapple and Grated Swiss Cheese Salad, Glazed Lamb Hearts, Breaded Sweetbreads with Mushroom Sauce, Deviled Tongue Mold, Parboiled Fish Roe – and lots of other things you’re not likely to find these days in a Rachael Ray or Emeril cookbook.

What I also like about these old books is that theygive you lots of cooking tips. Like thechapter on Food Stretchers and Alternates included in The Good Housekeeping Cook Book (my edition is dated 1946). What do you do to save butter? Why, use margarine. Or make your butter pats smaller. Caution your family to use smaller portions (like that will work in this age of supersizing everything), or make a butter spread (by letting it soften and adding unflavored gelatin, water, a little salt, and some evaporated milk).

Yum-yum!

Do you ever use an old cookbook?