With mid-nineteenth century advances in scientific studies of health and nutrition, diet-based cookbooks like Dr. Russell Trall’s proliferated. Trall founded the New York Hydropathic and Physiological School in 1854, and his New Hydropathic Cook Book was one of the first to subscribe to the school’s advocacy of the water cure, using baths and drinking pure water to combat disease and maintain health. The diet proposed in the cookbook consists almost entirely of fruits, grains, and vegetables, with a few animal-based recipes thrown in for those who demanded a wider diet. More than just a list of recipes, the cookbook presents the basis of Trall’s diet—the belief that all nutritive material comes from vegetables, and thus animal foods are inferior because they are derivative and likely to be impure. It also includes a discussion of digestion and an exhaustive catalogue of vegetable foods. This edition of The New Hydropathic Cookbook was reproduced by permission from the volume in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded in 1812 by Isaiah Thomas, a Revolutionary War patriot and successful printer and publisher, the society is a research library documenting the lives of Americans from the colonial era through 1876. The society collects, preserves, and makes available as complete a record as possible of the printed materials from the early American experience. The cookbook collection comprises approximately 1,100 volumes.

Eliza Action’s masterpiece set out the fundamentals of domestic English cookery and offered a wealth of dishes for every occasion. The recipes are a model of sensible instruction for preparing food simply but well. This authoritative book was not only a guide to the best English cooking, but unusually for the time, it also contained recipes for German, Indian, and Caribbean dishes. Acton’s book introduced the now-universal practice of listing ingredients and suggested cooking times for each recipe, and it included the first print recipe for Brussels Sprouts. Original illustrations and instructions on basic techniques ranging from frying fish to roasting meat conveyed in Acton’s elegant prose make the book a quintessential tome packed full of wisdom, common sense, and culinary delights. No wonder the doyenne of American woman’s affairs, the editor of the most influential and widely read magazine of the day, Godey’s Lady’s Book, chose to adapt the book for her American readers. In her preface, Sarah Hale gushes that the work is well adapted to the wants of this country at the present time, and that it is so complete she has little to add except regarding preparation of foods that are more strictly American such as Indian Corn, Terrapin, and others. She carefully marked her additional matter in brackets, and she did revise some articles and terms not generally known here. The result is a treasury of international cuisine written by two experts that was published and reprinted for decades. This edition of Modern Cookery, in All Its Branches was reproduced by permission from the volume in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded in 1812 by Isaiah Thomas, a Revolutionary War patriot and successful printer and publisher, the society is a research library documenting the lives of Americans from the colonial era through 1876. The society collects, preserves, and makes available as complete a record as possible of the printed materials from the early American experience. The cookbook collection comprises approximately 1,100 volumes.

Published in 1848 in Massachusetts, The People’s Manual offers practical and valuable guidance on the daily activities of farming, caring for livestock, cooking, and preparing medicinal cures—all of which provide the entire community with better products and health. As stated in the introduction, the author strove to write “valuable matter” that is of “highly practical importance” and divides the work into two primary sections: making butter and farm care, and preserving health through medicinal recipes. From constructing the best milk cellar and working butter to fattening swine, saving manure, preparing bedbug poison, and curing lock jaw, The People’s Manual by a self-sufficient carpenter offers readers of the 19th century recipes and instructions of “the highest practical moment to every family” as well as giving modern readers a rare glimpse into the roots of self-sufficiency and farm-to-table living. This edition of The People’s Manual was reproduced by permission from the volume in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded in 1812 by Isaiah Thomas, a Revolutionary War patriot and successful printer and publisher, the society is a research library documenting the lives of Americans from the colonial era through 1876. The society collects, preserves, and makes available as complete a record as possible of the printed materials from the early American experience. The cookbook collection comprises approximately 1,100 volumes.

The unnamed author of this charming almanac/cookbook concoction was as a “lady of [New York] who has kept an extensive Boarding-house, for twenty-two years in Pearl St.” She took her almanac word for word, even using the same typesetting, from the most recent Farmer’s Almanac for 1840 by David Young. But in addition to the traditional almanac information on daily and monthly calendars, weather, and astronomical events, she included over 250 recipes in the art of cooking, pastry, and confectionary, useful household memorandums, and simple cures. This edition of The Housekeeper’s Almanac was reproduced by permission from the volume in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded in 1812 by Isaiah Thomas, a Revolutionary War patriot and successful printer and publisher, the Society is a research library documenting the life of Americans from the colonial era through 1876. The Society collects, preserves, and makes available as complete a record as possible of the printed materials from the early American experience. The cookbook collection includes approximately 1,100 volumes.

Culinary Landmarks is a definitive history and bibliography of Canadian cookbooks from the beginning, when La cuisinière bourgeoise was published in Quebec City in 1825, to the mid-twentieth century. Over the course of more than ten years Elizabeth Driver researched every cookbook published within the borders of present-day Canada, whether a locally authored text or a Canadian edition of a foreign work. Every type of recipe collection is included, from trade publishers' bestsellers and advertising cookbooks, to home economics textbooks and fund-raisers from church women's groups. The entries for over 2,200 individual titles are arranged chronologically by their province or territory of publication, revealing cooking and dining customs in each part of the country over 125 years. Full bibliographical descriptions of first and subsequent editions are augmented by author biographies and corporate histories of the food producers and kitchen-equipment manufacturers, who often published the books. Driver's excellent general introduction sets out the evolution of the cookbook genre in Canada, while brief introductions for each province identify regional differences in developments and trends. Four indexes and a 'Chronology of Canadian Cookbook History' provide other points of access to the wealth of material in this impressive reference book.

The category of “charity cookbook” is a favorite in American culinary history. Funds raised by sales of these cookbooks, with recipes donated by women’s groups and church societies, were used to aid a wide variety of local causes and charities. My Mother’s Cook Book belongs in this category—an excellent example of regional cooking styles of the post-Civil War Midwest. Several hundred recipes compiled by Ladies of St. Louis for the Women’s Christian Home include a complete range of dishes from soup to nuts, tending toward dishes “my mother” used, and handed down from mother to daughter. The ladies’ droll sense of humor is captured in the preface: “The recipes gathered in this priceless volume have been sent from all parts of the known world; several even from New Jersey.” Although the ladies are unnamed, a dedication by Mrs. E. F. Richards and the Misses Glover thanks all the contributors as well as local advertisers who aided the project (ads for merchants selling a wide variety of merchandise, including the “latest gems of fashion,” are included at the front of the book). This edition of My Mother’s Cook Book was reproduced by permission from the volume in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded in 1812 by Isaiah Thomas, a Revolutionary War patriot and successful printer and publisher, the society is a research library documenting the lives of Americans from the colonial era through 1876. The society collects, preserves, and makes available as complete a record as possible of the printed materials from the early American experience. The cookbook collection comprises approximately 1,100 volumes.