Vintage Cookbooks

Some still think vegetarianism is a fad as opposed to a lifestyle. While it is true that it came to national attention in the 1960s here in the United States, its origins are hundreds if not thousands of years older than that. Make no mistake, vegetarianism is a lifestyle and has been for a good long while.

In the western world alone, vegetarianism began to take hold in the mid-1800s in both Great Britain and the United States. According to the International Vegetarian Union website the word “vegetarian” first appeared in print in 1843. Four years later the Vegetarian Society was formed in Great Britain as a secular organization to promote this healthy, plant-based diet.

A few years after that an American Presbyterian minister, Sylvester Graham, helped to found the American Vegetarian Society in New York in 1850. Graham stressed the importance of whole-wheat flour and is, perhaps, best known as the inventor of the Graham Cracker. His followers practiced temperance (no alcohol!), vegetarianism and (I am guessing with tongue-in-cheek) washing Graham Crackers down with a tall glass of milk.

So if vegetarianism has been around for awhile, how about vegetarian recipes and vegetarian cookbooks? Think about it. Just because people included meat in their diet (and were therefore not vegetarians) it doesn’t mean they didn’t enjoy cooking and eating vegetarian dishes. If there were vegetarians before the psychedelic 60s, then there were, ipso facto, vegetarian cookbooks!

I have been the proud recipient of many cookbooks handed down to my parents and finally to me. When I became a vegetarian in 1975, I was also sent vegetarian cookbooks and cookbooks with sections on cooking for vegetarians.

One of the vintage, purely vegetarian cookbooks I acquired is a publication by Loma Linda Foods titled “Vegetable Protein Recipes”. It is undated but appears to be printed about 1967 as a means of promoting their “low fat, high protein” foods, many of which are still found at your local grocery store today.

Another fun cookbook is the undated “Recipes for Cooking” book printed in Fresno, California sometime in the 1930s. It has a full 5-page section titled “Vegetarian Recipes” which includes but is not limited to Baked Onions, Mock Whitefish, Vegetarian Hamburger Steak, Vegetarian Sausage, Macaroni Croquettes and Vegetable Oyster Pie. In this section there is a Kingsford’s Corn Starch ad and it looks like the woman in the ad is cooking on a wood-fired stove – something my wife grew up with but which our son would probably not appreciate or even understand today.

I remember visiting my friend, Gay, who was a nutritionist for a northern California coastal valley school district in the late 1970s. Her cook was an older employee (Gay was about 25 and her employee was about 65) who baked in an even older wood-fired oven in their central kitchen.

There were no gauges on the oven so when Gay showed me the dessert they were baking that day, I asked “How can you tell how hot the oven is without some sort of temperature gauge?” Without saying a word, Gay’s cook opened the massive oven door, knelt down and stuck both of her arms in the oven. It took me a full minute to pick my jaw up off the floor.

Gay explained that her cook had a 40-year relationship with this specific oven and knew it so well she could not only tell when the temperature was just right, she could also tell if it was heating evenly from one side to the other just by sticking her arms in the oven for a few seconds. I again picked my jaw up of the floor. I could only wonder what it must have been like for my ancestors who cooked in dutch ovens over camp fires as they migrated west from Pennsylvania in the 1850s.

I like to tell folks that this image is a photo taken in my test kitchen but they know better. It is a photo from a cookbook printed about 1927 by the Jewel Tea Company and titled “Mary Dunbar’s Favorite Recipes”.

My favorite cookbook is dated 1908 and titled “Merced Carnival Cook Book”. It has sections on soups, salads, vegetables, pickles, breads, cakes, cookies, pudding, pies, candies and “miscellaneous”. It is encouraging to note that the first page is composed of totally vegetarian soup recipes!

Under the miscellaneous category there are three recipes for “Cheese Straws”. They must have been popular at the turn of the last century. To make them you take a “Heaping cup grated cheese, level cup flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, pinch cayenne pepper and salt. Mix well with water. Bake in hot oven.” I’m gonna try it.

What I like best about this cookbook is written in the preface. It is here that the authors divulge their “Recipe for Successful Cooking”. It is as follows:

Take 2 lbs. of the best control,

1 lb. of justice,

1 lb. of discipline,

1 1/2 lbs. of consideration,

5 lbs. of patience,

Sweeten with charity and let the mixture simmer well,

Keep constantly on hand.

Fun stuff! If you have a favorite story about vintage cookbooks and/or recipes, please leave a comment!

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