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A Database of Historical Cookbooks

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Re: A Database of Historical Cookbooks

#3

Post by helsinkiandrew »

I recently read and was amazed that ”The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy“ by Hannah Glasse, published in 1747 was a best seller around the English speaking world for over a hundred years.

“We had emancipated ourselves from the sceptre of King George, but that of Hannah Glasse was extended without challenge over our fire-sides and dinner-tables, with a sway far more imperative and absolute"

Re: A Database of Historical Cookbooks

#4

Post by dutchmartin »

kanobo wrote: post #2

I'm personally interested in what old fast food and junk food used to taste like, for example the recipe to the original Coke drink: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/extras/the-recipe . I wish I could go back and taste a 50's In-N-Out meal.

Sounds like a great idea to start a museum (exhibition) with. You could make a 50’s restaurant with various food offerings that were popular then.

Re: A Database of Historical Cookbooks

#5

Post by galkk »

The more I try to cook, the deeper respect I have for historical cooks. The things that we have for granted now, like thermometers, stoves where one could set the level of heat were unavailable and cooking almost anything besides very simple dishes was quite hard.

Re: A Database of Historical Cookbooks

#6

Post by bakuninsbart »

If I do cook german cuisine, I will usually use Henriette Davidis book, it is detailed yet simple, and unpretentious, which I don't often find in good cookbooks.

Apparently the db even has her book in English, so if people here are interested in cooking german food, I think it is a really good recommendation.

One of my favorite aspects is how she will usually give recommendations about using everything that you might usually think is trash. If you're cooking on a budget, these old cookbooks are actually incredibly helpful.

Re: A Database of Historical Cookbooks

#8

Post by [deleted] »

galkk wrote: post #5

The more I try to cook, the deeper respect I have for historical cooks. The things that we have for granted now, like thermometers, stoves where one could set the level of heat were unavailable and cooking almost anything besides very simple dishes was quite hard.

[deleted]

Re: A Database of Historical Cookbooks

#9

Post by cehrlich »

bakuninsbart wrote: post #6

If I do cook german cuisine, I will usually use Henriette Davidis book, it is detailed yet simple, and unpretentious, which I don't often find in good cookbooks. Apparently the db even has her book in English, so if people here are interested in cooking german food, I think it is a really good recommendation. One of my favorite aspects is how she will usually give recommendations about using everything that you might…

If you ever want to cook Austrian cuisine, the definitive book is "Die Gute Küche" by Plachutta. If you can find a used old copy, it's pretty much in plain text so it's very easy to run it through OCR translation.
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