[Sca-cooks] First cookbooks....

[Elaine Koogler]

Huette von Ahrens wrote:
> When I was 9, my mother went into the hospital for a week to have her
> gall bladder removed.  She had premade some casseroles for Dad to heat
> up while she was gone, but I quickly became the designated heater.  I
> didn't like the choice she had made for one Sunday, so I got out her
> yellow Good Housekeeping Cookbook and made a casserole all on my own,
> without my dad even knowing I had done so.  It worked out well and became
> a family favorite for several years.  So the Good Housekeeping Cookbook
> would be the first adult cookbook that I used without supervision.
>   
Yup...my husband inherited a copy of this one from his grandmother.  It 
still is an excellent reference book when trying to figure out how to do 
something!
> The first "period" cookbook that I ever owned would, unfortunately, be
> "Fabulous Feasts", followed quickly by "Sallets, Humbles and Shrewbery
> Cakes".  I believe I was then given a very badly xeroxed copy of one
> of the first few editions of Duke Cariadoc's collection, which exposed
> me to real historical recipes and I got better and my addiction to collecting
> historical cookbooks grew from that.  I got that xerox from a boyfriend in
> 1976 also, but I can't remember which edition it would have been then.
>
> Huette
>   
Good grief...your copy of Cariadoc's collection is older than mine...I 
think it got mine in the early 80's.  I also have a copy of Fab Feasts 
that I got around the same time.  Didn't know that the recipes were so 
suspect at the time!  How much we have learned over the years!!

Kiri