Cookbooks: Jewish and more
With the establishment of Food Studies programs at universities in North America and elsewhere over the past several decades, cookbooks are now fully recognized by academic libraries as valuable troves of all kinds of information. Foodways researcher Barbara Wheaton uses cookbooks to document the use of ingredients; kitchen equipment and the workspace; and cooking techniques across time and space.[i] And as NYU professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health Marion Nestle writes in her foreword to 101 Classic Cookbooks, “food history is inscribed in cookbooks. Recipes are gateways to understanding how people ate and thought about foodways in the past.”[ii]
[i]Barbara Wheaton, “Finding Real Life In Cookbooks: The Adventures Of A Culinary Historian,” Humanities Research Group, Vol. 7 (1998).
[ii] Marvin J. Taylor and Clark Wolf, eds., 101 Classic Cookbooks: 501 Classic Recipes (New York: Rizzoli, 2012), p. 8-9.