eBay

RARE Book

Recipes Contributed by
Southgate Senior Citizens
Sacramento, Ca.

1976

For offer, a rare book! Fresh from a prominent estate in Upstate NY. Never offered on the market until now. Vintage, Old, Original, Antique, NOT a Reproduction - Guaranteed !! I could not find this book for sale anywhere. 62 p. Wraps made of old, durable wallpaper samples. Saw a recipe for Beetnik salad, a Napa Valley dish, and much more. In good condition. Binding worn, curling at edges. Please see photos for all details. If you collect 20th century American local imprints, Americana history, food, cooking arts, etc. this is a treasure you will not see again! Add this to your book library, or paper / ephemera collection. Combine shipping on multiple bid wins! 1929

Sacramento (/ˌsækrəˈmɛntoʊ/ SAK-rə-MEN-toh; Spanish: [sakɾaˈmento]) is the capital city of the U.S. state of California and the seat of Sacramento County. Located at the confluence of the Sacramento River and the American River in Northern California's Sacramento Valley, Sacramento's estimated 2018 population of 501,334 makes it the sixth-largest city in California and the 9th largest capital in the United States.[11][12] Sacramento is the seat of the California Assembly, the Governor of California, and Supreme Court of California, making it the state's political center and a hub for lobbying and think tanks. Sacramento is also the cultural and economic core of the Sacramento metropolitan area, which had 2010 population of 2,414,783,[10] making it the fifth largest in California.[13]

Sacramento is the fastest-growing major city in California,[14] owing to its status as a notable financial center on the West Coast and as a major educational hub, home of Sacramento State University and University of California, Davis. Similarly, Sacramento is a major center for the California healthcare industry, as the seat of Sutter Health, the world-renowned UC Davis Medical Center, and the UC Davis School of Medicine, and notable tourist destination in California, as the site of The California Museum, the Crocker Art Museum, California Hall of Fame, the California State Capitol Museum, and the Old Sacramento State Historic Park. Sacramento is known for its evolving contemporary culture, dubbed the most "hipster city" in California.[15][16] In 2002, the Harvard University Civil Rights Project conducted for Time magazine named Sacramento "America's Most Diverse City".[17]

Before the arrival of the Spanish, the area was inhabited by the Nisenan people indigenous peoples of California. Spanish cavalryman Gabriel Moraga surveyed and named the Rio del Santísimo Sacramento (Sacramento River) in 1808, after the Blessed Sacrament, referring to the Eucharist in the Catholic Church. In 1839, Juan Bautista Alvarado, Mexican governor of Alta California granted the responsibility of colonizing the Sacramento Valley to Swiss-born, Mexican citizen John Augustus Sutter, who subsequently established Sutter's Fort and the settlement at the Rancho Nueva Helvetia. Following the American Conquest of California and the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, the waterfront developed by Sutter began to be developed and incorporated in 1850 as the City of Sacramento. As a result of the California Gold Rush, Sacramento became a major commercial center and distribution point for Northern California, serving as the terminus for the Pony Express and the First Transcontinental Railroad.

History

Main articles: History of Sacramento, California and Timeline of Sacramento, California

Historical affiliations

United Mexican States 1839–1848

California Republic 1846

United States 1848–present

Pre-Columbian period

Nisenan (Southern Maidu) and Plains Miwok Native Americans had lived in the area for perhaps thousands of years. Unlike the settlers who would eventually make Sacramento their home, these Native Americans left little evidence of their existence. Traditionally, their diet was dominated by acorns taken from the plentiful oak trees in the region, and by fruits, bulbs, seeds, and roots gathered throughout the year.

Spanish period

Sutter's Fort was founded in 1840 by John Augustus Sutter during the period of Mexican California.

In 1808, the Spanish explorer Gabriel Moraga discovered and named the Sacramento Valley and the Sacramento River. A Spanish writer with the Moraga expedition wrote: "Canopies of oaks and cottonwoods, many festooned with grapevines, overhung both sides of the blue current. Birds chattered in the trees and big fish darted through the pellucid depths. The air was like champagne, and (the Spaniards) drank deep of it, drank in the beauty around them. "¡Es como el sagrado sacramento! (It's like the Blessed Sacrament.)"[18] The valley and the river were then christened after the "Most Holy Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ", referring to the Catholic sacrament of the Eucharist.

Mexican period

John Sutter Sr. first arrived in the area on August 13, 1839, at the divergence of the American and Sacramento Rivers with a Mexican land grant of 50,000 acres. The next year, he and his party established Sutter's Fort, a massive adobe structure with walls eighteen feet high and three feet thick.[19]

Representing Mexico, Sutter Sr. called his colony New Helvetia, a Swiss inspired name, and was the political authority and dispenser of justice in the new settlement. Soon, the colony began to grow as more and more pioneers headed west. Within just a few short years, Sutter Sr. had become a grand success, owning a ten-acre orchard and a herd of thirteen thousand cattle. Fort Sutter became a regular stop for the increasing number of immigrants coming through the valley. In 1847 Sutter Sr. received 2,000 fruit trees, which started the agriculture industry in the Sacramento Valley. Later that same year, Sutter Sr. hired James Marshall to build a sawmill so that he could continue to expand his empire,[19] however, unbeknownst to many, Sutter Sr.'s "empire" had been built on some very thin margins of credit.[20]

American period

Sacramento in 1849, when the city was an economic center of the California Gold Rush.

In 1848, when gold was discovered by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma (located some 50 miles (80.5 km) northeast of the fort), a large number of gold-seekers came to the area, increasing the population. In August 1848 Sutter Sr.'s son, John Sutter Jr. arrived in the area to assist his father in relieving his indebtedness. Now compounding the problem of his father's indebtedness, was the additional strain placed on the Sutters by the ongoing arrival of thousands of new gold miners and prospectors in the area, many quite content to squat on unwatched portions of the vast Sutter lands, or to abscond with various unattended Sutter properties or belongings if they could. In Sutter's case, rather than being a 'boon' for Sutter, his employee's discovery of gold in the area turned out to be more of a personal 'bane' for him.

By December 1848, John Sutter Jr., in association with Sam Brannan, began laying out the City of Sacramento, 2 miles south of his father's settlement of New Helvetia. This venture was undertaken against the wishes of Sutter Sr., however the father, being deeply in debt, was in no position to stop the venture. For commercial reasons the new city was named "Sacramento City," after the Sacramento River. Sutter Jr. and Brannon hired topographical engineer William H. Warner to draft the official layout of the city, which included 26 lettered and 31 numbered streets (today's grid from C St. to Broadway and from Front St. to Alhambra Blvd.). Unfortunately, a certain bitterness grew between the elder Sutter and his son as Sacramento became an overnight commercial success (Sutter's Fort, Mill and the town of Sutterville, all founded by John Sutter, Sr., would eventually fail).

The citizens of Sacramento adopted a city charter in 1849, which was recognized by the state legislature in 1850. Sacramento is the oldest incorporated city in California, incorporated on February 27, 1850.[21] During the early 1850s, the Sacramento valley was devastated by floods, fires and cholera epidemics. Despite this, because of its position just downstream from the Mother Lode in the Sierra Nevada, the new city grew, quickly reaching a population of 10,000.

Old Sacramento is the settlement that grew out of Sutter's Fort.

The California State Legislature, with the support of Governor John Bigler, moved to Sacramento in 1854. The capital of California under Spanish (and, subsequently, Mexican) rule had been Monterey, where in 1849 the first Constitutional Convention and state elections were held. The convention decided that San Jose would be the new state's capital. After 1850, when California's statehood was ratified, the legislature met in San Jose until 1851, Vallejo in 1852, and Benicia in 1853, before moving to Sacramento. In the Sacramento Constitutional Convention of 1879, Sacramento was named to be the permanent state capital.

Begun in 1860 to be reminiscent of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., the Classical Revival style California State Capitol was completed in 1874. In 1861, the legislative session was moved to the Merchants Exchange Building in San Francisco for one session because of massive flooding in Sacramento. The legislative chambers were first occupied in 1869 while construction continued. From 1862 to 1868, part of the Leland Stanford Mansion was used for the governor's offices during Stanford's tenure as the Governor; and the legislature met in the Sacramento County Courthouse.

With its new status and strategic location, Sacramento quickly prospered and became the western end of the Pony Express. Later it became a terminus of the First Transcontinental Railroad, which began construction in Sacramento in 1863 and was financed by "The Big Four"—Mark Hopkins, Charles Crocker, Collis P. Huntington, and Leland Stanford. Both the American and especially Sacramento rivers would be key elements in the economic success of the city. In fact, Sacramento effectively controlled commerce on these rivers, and public works projects were funded though taxes levied on goods unloaded from boats and loaded onto rail cars in the historic Sacramento Rail Yards.

In 1850 and again in 1861, Sacramento citizens were faced with a completely flooded town. In 1861, Governor Leland Stanford, who was inaugurated in early January 1861, had to attend his inauguration in a rowboat, which was not too far from his house in town on N street. The flood waters were so bad, the legend says, that when he returned to his house, he had to enter into it through the second floor window. From 1862 until the mid-1870s Sacramento raised the level of its downtown by building reinforced brick walls on its downtown streets, and filling the resulting street walls with dirt. Thus the previous first floors of buildings became the basements, with open space between the street and the building, previously the sidewalk, now at the basement level. Over the years, many of these underground spaces have been filled or destroyed by subsequent development. However, it is still possible to view portions of the "Sacramento Underground".

Modern era

Tower Bridge, which connects Sacramento to West Sacramento, was built in 1935 and is a California Historical Landmark.

See also: Urban redevelopment in Sacramento, California

The city's current charter was adopted by voters in 1920.[22] As a charter city, Sacramento is exempt from many laws and regulations passed by the state legislature. The city has expanded continuously over the years. The 1964 merger of the City of North Sacramento with Sacramento substantially increased its population, and large annexations of the Natomas area eventually led to significant population growth throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

Sacramento County (along with a portion of adjacent Placer County) is served by a customer-owned electric utility, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD). Sacramento voters approved the creation of SMUD in 1923.[23] In April 1946, after 12 years of litigation, a judge ordered Pacific Gas & Electric to transfer title of Sacramento's electric distribution system to SMUD. Today SMUD is the sixth-largest public electric utility in the U.S., and is a leader for innovative programs and services, including the development of clean fuel resources, such as solar power.[24]

The Elks Tower was built in 1926 in an Italianate style.

The year following the creation of SMUD, 1924, brought several events in Sacramento: Standard Oil executive Verne McGeorge established McGeorge School of Law, American department store Weinstock & Lubin opened a new store at 12th and K street, the US$2 million Senator Hotel was open, Sacramento's drinking water became filtered and treated drinking water, and Sacramento boxer Georgie Lee fought Francisco Guilledo, a Filipino professional boxer known as Pancho Villa, at L Street Auditorium on March 21.[25]

Early in World War II, the Sacramento Assembly Center (also known as the Walerga Assembly Center) was established to house Japanese Americans forcibly "evacuated" from the West Coast under Executive Order 9066. The camp was one of fifteen temporary detention facilities where over 110,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of them U.S. citizens, were held while construction on the more permanent War Relocation Authority camps was completed. The assembly center was built on the site of a former migrant labor camp, and inmates began arriving from Sacramento and San Joaquin Counties on May 6, 1942. It closed after only 52 days, on June 26, and the population of 4,739 was transferred to the Tule Lake concentration camp. The site was then turned over to the Army Signal Corps and dedicated as Camp Kohler.

The 1975 assassination attempt of President Gerald Ford in Capitol Park.

After the war and the end of the incarceration program, returning Japanese Americans were often unable to find housing and so 234 families temporarily lived at the former assembly center. Camp Kohler was destroyed by a fire in December 1947, and the assembly center site is now part of the Foothill Farms-North Highlands subdivision.[26] The Sacramento-Yolo Port District was created in 1947, and ground was broken on the Port of Sacramento in 1949.

On June 29, 1963, with 5,000 spectators waiting to welcome her, the Motor Vessel Taipei Victory arrived.[27] The Nationalist Chinese flagship docked at the Port of Sacramento, being first ocean-going vessel in Sacramento since the steamship Harpoon in 1934.

In 1967, Ronald Reagan became the last Governor of California to live permanently in the city. The 1980s and 1990s saw the closure of several local military bases: McClellan Air Force Base, Mather Air Force Base, and Sacramento Army Depot. In 1980, there was another flood.

In spite of military base closures and the decline of agricultural food processing, Sacramento has continued to experience population growth in recent years. Primary sources of population growth are an influx of residents from the nearby San Francisco Bay Area, as well as immigration from Asia and Latin America.

After acquiring the majority stake in the Sacramento Kings, the team's new owner, Vivek Ranadivé with the help of the city, agreed to build a new Arena in the downtown area. With a final estimated cost of $558.2 million, Sacramento's Golden 1 Center opened on September 30, 2016.

Geography

Aerial view of Central Sacramento and the Sacramento River.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city covers an area of 100.1 square miles (259 km2), 97.81% of it land, and 2.19% of it water.

Depth to groundwater is typically about 30 feet (9 m). Much of the land to the west of the city (in Yolo County) is permanently reserved for a vast flood control basin (the Yolo Bypass), due to the city's historical vulnerability to floods. As a result, the contiguous urban area sprawls only four miles (6 km) west of downtown (as West Sacramento, California) but 30 miles (48 km) northeast and east, into the Sierra Nevada foothills, and 10 miles (16 km) to the south into valley farmland.

The city is located at the confluence of the Sacramento River and the American River, and has a deep-water port connected to the San Francisco Bay by a channel through the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta. It is the shipping and rail center for the Sacramento Valley. Food processing is among the major industries in the area.[28]

A cookbook or cookery book[1] is a kitchen reference containing recipes.

Cookbooks may be general, or may specialize in a particular cuisine or category of food.

Recipes in cookbooks are organized in various ways: by course (appetizer, first course, main course, dessert), by main ingredient, by cooking technique, alphabetically, by region or country, and so on. They may include illustrations of finished dishes and preparation steps; discussions of cooking techniques, advice on kitchen equipment, ingredients, and substitutions; historical and cultural notes; and so on.

Cookbooks may be written by individual authors, who may be chefs, cooking teachers, or other food writers; they may be written by collectives; or they may be anonymous. They may be addressed to home cooks, to professional restaurant cooks, to institutional cooks, or to more specialized audiences.

Some cookbooks are didactic, with detailed recipes addressed to beginners or people learning to cook particular dishes or cuisines;[2] others are simple aide-memoires, which may document the composition of a dish or even precise measurements, but not detailed techniques.[3]

History

Early works

Apicius, De re coquinaria, an early collection of Roman recipes.

18th Century Recipes for Biscuits from a private collection of recipes

See also: Category: Medieval Cookbooks

Ancient Mesopotamian recipes have been found on three Akkadian tablets, dating to about 1700 BC.[4][5]

The earliest collection of recipes that has survived in Europe is De re coquinaria, written in Latin. An early version was first compiled sometime in the 1st century and has often been attributed to the Roman gourmet Marcus Gavius Apicius, though this has been cast in doubt by modern research. An Apicius came to designate a book of recipes. The current text appears to have been compiled in the late 4th or early 5th century; the first print edition is from 1483. It records a mix of ancient Greek and Roman cuisine, but with few details on preparation and cooking.[6]

An abbreviated epitome entitled Apici Excerpta a Vinidario, a "pocket Apicius" by Vinidarius, "an illustrious man",[7] was made in the Carolingian era.[8] In spite of its late date it represents the last manifestation of the cuisine of Antiquity.

The earliest cookbooks known in Arabic are those of al-Warraq (an early 10th-century compendium of recipes from the 9th and 10th centuries) and al-Baghdadi (13th century).[9]

Chinese recipe books are known from the Tang dynasty, but most were lost.[citation needed] One of the earliest surviving Chinese-language cookbooks is Hu Sihui's "Yinshan Zhengyao" (Important Principles of Food and Drink), believed to be from 1330. Hu Sihui, Buyantu Khan's dietitian and therapist, recorded a Chinese-inflected Central Asian cuisine as eaten by the Yuan court; his recipes were adapted from foods eaten all over the Mongol Empire.[10] Eumsik dimibang, written around 1670, is the oldest Korean cookbook and the first cookbook written by a woman in East Asia.

After a long interval, the first recipe books to be compiled in Europe since Late Antiquity started to appear in the late thirteenth century. About a hundred are known to have survived, some fragmentary, from the age before printing.[11] The earliest genuinely medieval recipes have been found in a Danish manuscript dating from around 1300, which in turn are copies of older texts that date back to the early 13th century or perhaps earlier.[12]

Low and High German manuscripts are among the most numerous. Among them is Daz buch von guter spise ("The Book of Good Food") written c. 1350 in Würzberg and Kuchenmeysterey ("Kitchen Mastery"), the first printed German cookbook from 1485.[13] Two French collections are probably the most famous: Le Viandier ("The Provisioner") was compiled in the late 14th century by Guillaume Tirel, master chef for two French kings; and Le Menagier de Paris ("The Householder of Paris"), a household book written by an anonymous middle class Parisian in the 1390s.[14] Du fait de cuisine is another Medieval French cookbook, written in 1420.

From Southern Europe there is the 14th century Valencian manuscript Llibre de Sent Soví (1324), the Catalan Llibre de totes maneres de potatges de menjar ("The book of all recipes of dishes") and several Italian collections, notably the Venetian mid-14th century Libro per Cuoco,[15] with its 135 recipes alphabetically arranged. The printed De honesta voluptate et valetudine ("On honourable pleasure"), first published in 1475, is one of the first cookbooks based on Renaissance ideals, and, though it is as much a series of moral essays as a cookbook, has been described as "the anthology that closed the book on medieval Italian cooking".[16]

Medieval English cookbooks include The Forme of Cury and Utilis Coquinario, both written in the fourteenth century. The Forme of Cury is a cookbook authored by the chefs of Richard II. Utilis Coquinario is a similar cookbook though written by an unknown author. Recipes originating in England also include the earliest recorded recipe for ravioli (1390s).[citation needed]

Modern cookbooks

from Modern Cookery for Private Families by Eliza Acton (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1871. p.48.)

With the advent of the printing press in the 16th and 17th centuries, numerous books were written on how to manage households and prepare food. In Holland[17] and England[18] competition grew between the noble families as to who could prepare the most lavish banquet. By the 1660s, cookery had progressed to an art form and good cooks were in demand. Many of them published their own books detailing their recipes in competition with their rivals.[19] Many of these books have now been translated and are available online.[20]

By the 19th century, the Victorian preoccupation for domestic respectability brought about the emergence of cookery writing in its modern form. In 1796, the first known American cookbook titled, American Cookery, written by Amelia Simmons, was published in Hartford, Connecticut. Until then, the cookbooks printed and used in the Thirteen Colonies were British. The first modern cookery writer and compiler of recipes for the home was Eliza Acton. Her pioneering cookbook, Modern Cookery for Private Families (1845), was aimed at the domestic reader rather than the professional cook or chef. This was an immensely influential book, and it established the format for modern writing about cookery.[citation needed] The publication introduced the now-universal practice of listing the ingredients and suggested cooking times with each recipe. It included the first recipe for Brussels sprouts.[21] Contemporary chef Delia Smith is quoted as having called Acton "the best writer of recipes in the English language."[22] Modern Cookery long survived her, remaining in print until 1914 and available more recently in facsimile reprint.

Acton's work was an important influence on Isabella Beeton,[23] who published Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management in 24 monthly parts between 1857 and 1861. The book was a guide to running a Victorian household, with advice on fashion, child care, animal husbandry, poisons, the management of servants, science, religion, and industrialism.[24][25] Despite its title, most of the text consisted of recipes, such that another popular name for the volume is Mrs Beeton's Cookbook. Most of the recipes were illustrated with coloured engravings, and it was the first book to show recipes in a format that is still used today. Many of the recipes were plagiarised from earlier writers, including Acton.

In 1885 the Virginia Cookery Book was published by Mary Stuart Smith.[26] In 1896 the American cook Fannie Farmer (1857–1915) published The Boston Cooking School Cookbook which contained some 1,849 recipes.[27]

Types of cookbooks

Betty Crocker's Cook Book for Boys and Girls, 1957

Cookbooks that serve as basic kitchen references (sometimes known as "kitchen bibles") began to appear in the early modern period. They provided not just recipes but overall instruction for both kitchen technique and household management. Such books were written primarily for housewives and occasionally domestic servants as opposed to professional cooks, and at times books such as The Joy of Cooking (USA), La bonne cuisine de Madame E. Saint-Ange (France), The Art of Cookery (UK, USA), Il cucchiaio d'argento (Italy), and A Gift to Young Housewives (Russia) have served as references of record for national cuisines. Cookbook also tell stories of the writers themselves and reflect upon the era in which they are written. They often reveal notions of social, political, environmental or economic contexts. For example, during the era of industrialization, convenience foods were brought into many households and were integrated and present in cookbooks written in this time.[28] Related to this class are instructional cookbooks, which combine recipes with in-depth, step-by-step recipes to teach beginning cooks basic concepts and techniques. In vernacular literature, people may collect traditional recipes in family cookbooks.

While western cookbooks usually group recipes for main courses by the main ingredient of the dishes, Japanese cookbooks usually group them by cooking techniques (e.g., fried foods, steamed foods, and grilled foods). Both styles of cookbook have additional recipe groupings such as soups or sweets.

International and ethnic

Norwegian immigrant cookbook in Norwegian Published in the USA 1899

International and ethnic cookbooks fall into two categories: the kitchen references of other cultures, translated into other languages; and books translating the recipes of another culture into the languages, techniques, and ingredients of a new audience. The latter style often doubles as a sort of culinary travelogue, giving background and context to a recipe that the first type of book would assume its audience is already familiar with. Popular Puerto Rican cookbook, Cocina Criolla, written by Carmen Aboy Valldejuli, includes recipes that are typically of traditional Puerto Rican cuisine such as mofongo and pasteles. Valldejuli’s cookbook was not only important to Puerto Ricans, but also very popular in the United States where her original cookbook has since been published in several editions, including English versions. These include The Art of Caribbean Cookery - Doubleday, 1957; Puerto Rican Cookery - Pelican Publishing, 1983; and, Juntos en la Cocina (co-authored with her husband, Luis F. Valldejuli) - Pelican Publishing, 1986.[29]

Professional cookbooks

Professional cookbooks are designed for the use of working chefs and culinary students and sometimes double as textbooks for culinary schools. Such books deal not only in recipes and techniques, but often service and kitchen workflow matters. Many such books deal in substantially larger quantities than home cookbooks, such as making sauces by the liter or preparing dishes for large numbers of people in a catering setting. While the most famous of such books today are books like Le guide culinaire by Escoffier or The Professional Chef by the Culinary Institute of America, such books go at least back to medieval times, represented then by works such as Taillevent's Viandier and Chiquart d'Amiço's Du fait de cuisine.

Single-subject

Single-subject books, usually dealing with a specific ingredient, technique, class of dishes or target group (e.g. for kids), are quite common as well. Jack Monroe for example features low budget recipes. Some imprints such as Chronicle Books have specialized in this sort of book, with books on dishes like curries, pizza, and simplified ethnic food. Popular subjects for narrow-subject books on technique include grilling/barbecue, baking, outdoor cooking, and even recipe cloning (Recipe cloning is copying commercial recipes where the original is a trade secret[30]).

Community

Community cookbooks (also known as compiled, regional, charitable, and fund-raising cookbooks) are a unique genre of culinary literature. Community cookbooks focus on home cooking, often documenting regional, ethnic, family, and societal traditions, as well as local history.[31][32] Sondra Gotlieb, for example, wrote her cookbooks on Canadian food culture by visiting people and homes by region. She gathered recipes, observed the foodways, observed the people and their traditions of each region by being in their own homes. Gotlieb did this so that she could put together a comprehensive cookbook based on the communities and individuals that make up Canada.[33]Gooseberry Patch has been publishing community-style cookbooks since 1992 and built their brand on this community.

Chefs

Cookbooks can also document the food of a specific chef (particularly in conjunction with a cooking show) or restaurant. Many of these books, particularly those written by or for a well-established cook with a long-running TV show or popular restaurant, become part of extended series of books that can be released over the course of many years. Popular chef-authors throughout history include people such as Delia Smith, Julia Child, James Beard, Nigella Lawson, Edouard de Pomiane, Jeff Smith, Emeril Lagasse, Claudia Roden, Madhur Jaffrey, Katsuyo Kobayashi, and possibly even Apicius, the semi-pseudonymous author of the Roman cookbook De re coquinaria, who shared a name with at least one other famous food figure of the ancient world.

Famous cookbooks

A page from the Forme of Cury (14th century) by the Master Cooks of King Richard II of England

Famous cookbooks from the past, in chronological order, include:

De re coquinaria (The Art of Cooking) (late 4th / early 5th century) by Apicius

Kitab al-Tabikh (The Book of Dishes) (10th century) by Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq

Kitab al-Tabikh (The Book of Dishes) (1226) by Muhammad bin Hasan al-Baghdadi

Liber de Coquina (The Book of Cookery) (late 13th / early 14th century) by two unknown authors from France and Italy

Forme of Cury (14th century) by the Master Cooks of King Richard II of England

Viandier (14th century) by Guillaume Tirel alias Taillevent

De honesta voluptate et valetudine (1475) by Bartolomeo Platina - the first cookbook printed in a native language (Italian) in 1487

Cookbook of Infanta Maria of Portugal (c. 1565) - the oldest extant Portuguese cookbook

The Good Huswifes Jewell (1585) by Thomas Dawson

The English Huswife (1615) by Gervase Markham

Arte de Cocina, Pastelaria, Vizcocheria e Conservaria by Francisco Martinez Montiño - palace cook of King Philip II of Spain (1680).

The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Knight Opened by Kenelm Digby (1669)

Eumsik dimibang (1670) by Jang Gye-hyang of Andong Jang clan

Arte de Cozinha by Domingos Rodrigues - the first cookbook printed in Portuguese (1680)

Compendium ferculorum, albo Zebranie potraw by Stanisław Czerniecki – first cookbook in Polish (1682)

The Compleat Housewife (first American edition 1742) by Eliza Smith

The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy (1747) by Hannah Glasse

Hjelpreda I Hushållningen För Unga Fruentimber (1755) by Cajsa Warg

The Experienced English Housekeeper (1769) by Elizabeth Raffald

American Cookery (1796) by Amelia Simmons

A New System of Domestic Cookery (1806) by Maria Eliza Rundell

Le Cuisinier Royal (1817) by André Viard

Modern Cookery for Private Families (1845) by Eliza Acton

El Cocinero Puerto - Riqueño 1859 (author unknown)

Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management (1861) by Mrs Beeton

Подарок молодым хозяйкам, A Gift to Young Housewives (first Russian edition 1861) by Elena Molokhovets

Domestic Cook Book: Containing a Careful Selection of Useful Receipts for the Kitchen (1866) by Malinda Russell – first known cookbook by an African American woman

La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene (1891) by Pellegrino Artusi

The Epicurean (1894) by Charles Ranhofer

The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (1896) by Fannie Merritt Farmer

The Settlement Cook Book (1901) and 34 subsequent editions by Lizzie Black Kander

The Cook's Decameron: A Study In Taste, Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes (1901) by Mrs. W.G. Waters

Various cookbooks (between 1903 and 1934) by Auguste Escoffier

Edmonds Cookery Book (1908) by T.J. Edmonds Ltd

The Joy of Cooking (1931) by Irma Rombauer

Larousse Gastronomique (1938)

Книга о вкусной и здоровой пище, The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food (first Soviet edition 1939) by the Institute of Nutrition, USSR

O Livro de Pantagruel (first edition 1946) by Bertha Rosa-Limpo

A Book of Mediterranean Food (1950) by Elizabeth David

Il cucchiaio d'argento (1950)

The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook (1954) by Alice B. Toklas

Cooking with the Chinese Flavor (1956) and subsequent books by Lin Tsuifeng ("Mrs. Lin Yutang")

Mrs Balbir Singh's Indian Cookery (1961) by Mrs Balbir Singh

Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961) by Julia Child

Helen Gurley Brown's Single Girl's Cookbook (1969) by Helen Gurley Brown

The Fanny and Johnnie Cradock Cookery Programme (1970) by Fanny and Johnnie Cradock

Diet for a Small Planet (1971) by Frances Moore Lappé

The Complete International Jewish Cookbook (1976) by Evelyn Rose

Moosewood Cookbook (1978) by Mollie Katzen

Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book (1980) by Maryanne Blacker and Pamela Clark

Collections and collectors

Several libraries have extensive collections of cookbooks.

Harvard's Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America has a collection of 20,000 cookbooks and other books on food, including the earliest American cookbook, and the personal collections and papers of Julia Child, M.F.K. Fisher, and the authors of The Joy of Cooking.[34][35]

New York University's Fales Library includes a Food and Cookery Collection of over 15,000 books, including the personal libraries of James Beard, Cecily Brownstone, and Dalia Carmel.[36]

The Brotherton Library at University of Leeds holds a Designated Cookery Collection of over 8,000 books and 75 manuscripts, including the personal collections of Blanche Leigh, John Preston and Michael Bateman.[37][38]

Some individuals are notable for their collections of cookbooks, or their scholarly interest therein. Elizabeth Robins Pennell, an American critic in London from the 1880s, was an early writer on the subject, and has recently been called "one of the most well-known cookbook collectors in the world".[39] Much of her collection eventually went to the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress. Held alongside hers are the thousands of gastronomic volumes donated by food chemist Katherine Bitting; their collections were evaluated in tandem in Two Loaf-Givers, by one of the LOC's curators;[40] a digital version is available.[41]

Usage outside the world of food

The term cookbook is sometimes used to refer to any book containing a straightforward set of already tried and tested "recipes" or instructions for a specific field or activity, presented in detail so that the users who are not necessarily expert in the field can produce workable results. Examples include a set of circuit designs in electronics, a book of magic spells, or The Anarchist Cookbook, a set of instructions on destruction and living outside the law. O'Reilly Media publishes a series of books about computer programming named the Cookbook series, and each of these books contain hundreds of ready to use, cut and paste examples to solve a specific problem in a single programming language.