Surprise: Cookbook In the Mail

Sometimes, you get random emails that result in really wonderful surprises. A while ago a gentleman named Jon contacted me to see if I was interested in his wife's grandmother's cookbook. He warned me that it was in rough shape, but that they really wanted to see it go to someone who would appreciate it. So of course I said yes, and Jon and his wife Amy graciously sent it my way, and it arrived today! Very carefully packed with foam in a cardboard box and the book itself was wrapped in black fabric to keep it from getting further damaged. 

Published in 1912, this fourth edition of The Warren Cook Book (the second, 1903 addition has been digitized by the Library of Congress) was compiled by the Young Ladies' Missionary Society of the Presbyterian Church of Warren, PA. 

But while you can take a gander at the second edition, what makes this fourth edition volume really special is the woman who owned it. Her name, according to Amy, was Margaret Elmquist. 

Amy writes: "I actually know very little about her as she died when I was just six months old.  I have heard that she was a particularly beautiful woman.  She raised her children through the depression, I remember hearing she would cut newspapers to line her kids shoes.  She had two sons and one daughter.  After an accident she was paralyzed from the neck down for five years before passing." 

We don't know very much about Margaret except what we can glean from the cookbook she left behind. And just from that, I can tell she was a special lady. For one, the cookbook is stuffed FULL of ephemera - newspaper clippings, magazine clippings, handwritten recipes on scraps of paper, mail-away recipe cards, and more. But while her handwritten recipes are very special (particularly the home remedies for sickness!), what I love the most is how she pasted and wrote recipes right on the pages of the cookbook, in the sections where they most resembled similar recipes printed on the page. It's a marginalia-lover's dream! And an archivist's nightmare. Lol. Those acid-rich newspapers are already damaging the pages, and are probably part of the reason why the cookbook is in such rough shape (crumbling edges of pages, broken spine, etc.). Of course, it's also probable that Margaret loved this cookbook to death before she passed it down. 

See for yourself:

An absolutely huge stack of ephemera jammed between the cover and first pages. No wonder the cover came off!

Handwritten recipes for "Spanish Cream" and "Floating Islands" floating in amongst the clippings.

Margaret seemed to treat the cookbook like a scrapbook in many respects, pasting clippings over all the advertising pages. This one, "Veggie Plates" caught my eye.

Here's the rest of "Vegetable Plates" carefully cut and pasted onto the next page (the previous one is all folded up at left).

More ephemera jammed in - and you can see the darkening of the page caused by the acids in the newspaper clippings.

A close-up of Margaret's "Salmon Loaf" recipe, plus a pasted-in snippet at the top. I love how she organized her clippings and written recipes by the order of the recipes in the book. Note the reference to shrimp in the bottom margin - with a page number, no less!

More clippings. This is not even a fraction of what is in this cookbook.

Another beautifully handwritten recipe, this time for "Chow Mein," and behind it, tantalizingly, "Stir-n-roll pastry." Might have to try that one myself...

Margaret, you had me at "Maple Corn Bread."

I haven't had enough time to examine all the handwriting to be sure, but that Johnny Cake recipe was written with a fountain pen - makes me wonder if it was just Margaret adding to this cookbook, or was it multi-generational?

The dessert section always gets the most attention.

Margaret Elmquist - one of the few people to actually take advantage of those blank pages in the back of the cookbook - filling these with cookie recipes.

I thought the preserves section was curiously devoid of ephemera, until I got to this page. Clearly, Margaret had her own recipes! Like those spiced figs - yum.

Even the back cover was not exempt - Margaret pasted in newspaper time tables for roasting.

Okay, that's all I have time for - for now! This cookbook is more scrapbook than anything else and I love it so much, so thank you, Jon and Amy, for sending it my way!

I have a feeling Margaret and I would have got along very well - just about every one of her handwritten recipes sounds just exactly like something I would make.

I'll be diving more into this cookbook as time goes on, but since it arrived today, I just wanted to share the fun! And if I dig up any more information on Margaret, I'll let you know! 

And if YOU have any beautiful old cookbooks in your family collection, especially ones chock full of marginalia and ephemera, and you want someone to take care of it, feel free to send it my way! Just drop me a line on my contact form and I'll send you my address. :D 

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