Historical Recipes

Vintage California Cuisine
An Online Cookbook

Vintage Cuisine
A Survey of Cookbooks from the
19th and Early 20th Century

Vegetarian Beginnings
Around the turn of the last century, a growing number of people in the meat-loving United States began to drop flesh foods from their diet. There were plenty of skeptics who predicted that those who disdained meat would pay for their folly. But vegetarianism prevailed and steadily gained a wider following.

Books Reviewed

1891: The Inner Man: Good Things to Eat and Drink and Where to Get Them

1897: Practical Vegetarian Cookery

1910: Vegetarian Cook Book: Substitutes for Flesh Foods

The Birth of California Cuisine
The first cookbooks published in California harked back to New England, the region from where many of the first American settlers came by way of Clipper ships around Cape Horn. But gradually, early California cookbooks began to reflect early glimmers of interest in ethnic and seasonal, farm-fresh produce, the hallmarks of the cuisine that would become world famous in the 1970s.

Books Reviewed

1872: How to Keep a Husband or Culinary Tactics

1881: What Mrs. Fisher Knows about Old Southern Cooking: Soups, Pickles, Preserves, Etc.

1881: Los Angeles Cookery

1883: Clayton's Quaker Cookbook

1885: The Physiology of Taste: Harder’s Book of Practical American Cookery (in Six Volumes)

1903: Landmarks Club Cookbook

1914: Bohemian San Francisco: Its Restaurants and Their Most Famous Recipes

1928: Nellie Aldridge’s National Orange Show Cookbook

1932: The New Calavo Hostess Book

Visit the
Seasonal Chef Bookstore
or skip to the
Culinary History Section
for volumes including....

The Medieval Cookbook
By Maggie Black
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The Heretic's Feast: A History of Vegetarianism
By Colin Spencer
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Roots and Recipes: Six Generations of Heartland Cookery
By Vern Berry
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The Lewis & Clark Cookbook: Historic Recipes from the Corps of Discovery and Jefferson's America
By Leslie Mansfield
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Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century
By Laura Shapiro
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