Last year, I made Ruth Wakefield’s original recipe for Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookies. Invented in the 1930s, these cookies became so popular that by 1939 Nestlé developed chocolate chips specifically for use in the cookies. Nestlé continued to promote chocolate chips and chocolate chip cookies during World War II, such as in this poster suggesting that a batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies would be the perfect gift to send a soldier.
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These buns are named for their spiral shape like a snail’s shell – the word “Schnecken” means “snails” in German.
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This recipe comes from The Settlement Cookbook, first published in 1901. The book was initially created as a charity cookbook to raise funds for the Jewish Settlement House in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and was so successful that the proceeds of the first two editions were enough to purchase a site for the new Settlement House. The cookbook presents a variety of recipes influenced by German, Eastern European, and Jewish cooking, reflecting the culinary traditions of the immigrants served by the Settlement House.
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Before cooking shows on television, Americans turned to the radio for all their culinary infotainment.
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Themed parties were popular in the 1920s and 1930s, leading to the publication of many books of theme party ideas. This recipe for Hallowe’en Cookies comes from The Children’s Party Book, a 1923 book of party games, decorations, and recipes for a variety of holiday parties.
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This is the original recipe for Toll House chocolate crunch cookies, invented in the 1930s by Ruth Wakefield for her restaurant the Toll House Inn.
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This Magic Lemon Cream Pie came in handy during a recent visit to my parents’ house – their oven was broken, so this no-bake recipe saved the day!
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This recipe comes from the 1912 edition of Lowney’s Cook Book, so far my favorite cookbook in my growing collection of vintage books. I was lucky enough to happen across it at an antique fair near my town. Although the book has been digitized and is available online, there’s something magical about handling an original copy.
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This recipe comes from the delightfully-named 1911 book The Woman’s Book: Contains Everything a Woman Ought to Know. In addition to the expected sections on cooking, household management, and the care of children and pets, the book also contains some very progressive (for the time) chapters on careers for women. These outline the types of careers open to women, discuss the training and education needed for each career, and even note what salary to expect.
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This recipe comes from the Kitchen Army Nutrition and Receipt Book, a World War II-era book published by the Sydney Nutrition Committee of Sydney, Nova Scotia. The cookbook was written “to improve nutrition of Canadians and to emphasize its importance in the national war effort.”
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History in the Making 