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About the Collection

DeGolyer Library holds some 6,000 cookbooks, with especially strong holdings of western U.S. regional cookbooks. Because of DeGolyer Library’s interest in women’s history and business history, the cookbook collections are broad, including charity cookbooks, household guides, and advertising and promotional cookbooks issued by food companies. The largest single collection came to the DeGolyer from George Anne Myers, who in 2006 donated over 1,300 cookbooks. The digital collection provides a sample of the physical holdings.

While cookbooks are obviously storehouses of recipes, they also illuminate many other aspects of the past: technological (in the shift from fireplace to stove, from pump to running water, from icebox to electric refrigerator), sociological (family composition and relations); religious and scientific (church fundraisers; nutrition theories and fads); and commercial (promotional and advertising cookbooks). Cookbooks are important in printing history. In many cases, cookbooks were among the earliest non-serial imprints from small-town printing presses.

One of the oldest culinary resources at DeGolyer Library, the , is a bound volume of 276 pages, dated 1816. The handwriting is clear and the manuscript was prepared for the use of Doña Maria Josefa de la Luz Tapia (about whom we know nothing at present). The manuscript is a unique source for culinary history, women’s studies, and Mexican cultural history.

In addition to regional cookbooks, DeGolyer Library has a strong collection of cookbooks and pamphlets that companies used to advertise and promote their products (Gold Medal, Betty Crocker, Wesson, Oscar-Mayer, Borden, Kraft, General Foods, Baker’s Chocolate, Waring, Frigidaire, Austex Chili, Jello, etc.). These documents are useful for students of advertising and American popular culture, as well as culinary historians.