Historical Cookbooks at Harvard

Recipe for Walnut Catsup, 1781 (photo: Tania deLuzuriaga)

Take a look-y here. Tania of The Musing Bouche has just posted a *wonderful* piece on the treasures preserved at Harvard’s Schlesinger Library in the form of historical cookbooks.

History buffs, cookbook collectors, and any/all cooks among us are free to visit Schlesinger any day by appointment to peruse the archive and feast sumptuously on the writings and ingredients of, say, German Kosher Jews from the 1880s, early 20th-century Mexicans and Americans of the WWII generation. Plus, Julia Child devotees, you’re in luck! Her personal copy of  The Joy of Cooking, first edition, is at the Schlesinger!

[Cookbooks] are the stories of people. The rules they lived by. The resources they had at hand. The ways they coped, and the ways they celebrated.
– Tania, The Musing Bouche

Whet your appetite with The Musing Bouche post and Tania’s beautiful photographs of several the cookbooks, then get your fill at Harvard. Tania also links you to information about the week-long seminar offered by Barbara Ketcham Wheaton, the Schlesinger’s honorary curator of its culinary collection, on how academics can use culinary texts to inform their research.