Cookbooks
Cookbooks are many things to many people. Nationally-published cookbooks reflect mainstream society’s culinary tastes, while cook booklets are produced by companies to market their products. Community cookbooks speak to a local group’s interconnectedness through a church, school or civic organization, while manuscript cookbooks are collections of handwritten recipes held closely by a cook. Each of these cookbook forms may contain the same recipes common to its era, making them an important chronicle of trends and tastes. The museum holds more than 60,000 cookbooks.