Accession No.RARE.2023.0065: Purchased, 2023 September
[identification of item], Recipe Collection Likely Compiled by a DeKalb County, Illinois Resident, SPEC.RARE.MMS.0373, Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, Ohio State University
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Processed by: Casey Blackmore, 2024 February; Finding aid written by: Casey Blackmore, 2024 February
Recipes are a set of instructions for preparing a particular dish, including a list of the ingredients required. They have been written for many centuries for food dishes as well as cosmetics and medicinal cures, but the compilation of recipes into cookbooks and recipe books became popular in 17th century English homes when England’s literacy rate among women improved. Recipe books could be inherited from ancestors (and passed on to descendants) and individual recipes could be traded and borrowed to be copied down into one’s own personal notebook for use. Since books and paper were often expensive, a book or journal might be reused for multiple purposes, as long as blank pages remained. The modern recipe book format was established in 1845 by Elizabeth Acton and her book for domestic cooks called Modern Cookery for Private Families.
The collection contains mid-twentieth century recipes. Newspaper clippings inlaid with the collection contain newspapers bearing the name
The Recipe Collection Likely Compiled by a DeKalb County, Illinois Resident contians mainly handwritten recipes compiled sometime between the 1930s and the 1950s by an unknown individual. There are a few newspaper clippings inlaid with the handwritten recipes. Recipes include meat dishes, desserts, and breads. Several recipes in the collection from the early 1940s include directions on how to make a variety of jams and other canned goods, providing examples of home cooking adaptations for foods that were limited due to rationing around the time of World War II. There are also several medicinal recipes and formulas, such as how to treat a cold.