Whose Cookbook is it Anyways?

Cookbooks were first made exclusively for the kitchens of the Royal elite. After all, literacy was not widespread, printing was expensive, and most normal citizens did not care for their food to be fancy, just to be there. As time went on, the middle and upper class developed a desire for fancy foods, and common cookbooks were created to share Royal recipes to be made at home. By the time of the cookbooks in this collection, though, literacy was quite common and the printing press allowed for the mass-printing of texts. Cookbooks of the early 19th century, and later, were all about practicality, or, as the earliest cookbook in this collection is called "Rational Cookery". 

But who was creating these cookbooks? The truth is, it was a great deal of people. One large group that was printing cookbooks throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries were private groups writing for profit. These people, or more often publishers and businesses, collected recipes and produced them in these books. Another group creating these books was women, published by men. These books often had recipes for food or domestic goods and other tips for making the home. From this collection, the cookbooks Economical Housekeeping from 1886 and Three Meals a Day by Jessie Read from 1935 fit into this group. The third group was through Ladies' Societies in churches. The Ladies Aid Society, the Y.W.C.A., the BYPU, and the Women's Institute all have their own divisions in different churches, and many of them created Cookbooks to raise funds. Each women's society would contribute recipes and have them published and then sell them for profit to raise funds for their organization to help others, such as for helping the poor or the Workers Fund. 

When it comes to Publishing, many small and large publishing firms took an interest in publishing these works. Out of nearly a dozen cookbooks in this collection, no publisher is the same. Local print companies helped Ladies' church groups with creating these copies, and bigger publishers sold these cookbooks themselves.