Antiquated Cookbooks

I stumbled upon a 1930 cookbook, the New Delineator Recipes.  I love these old cookbooks.  When I find one I’m like Howard Carter when he found Tutankhamen’s tomb in Egypt.   Actually, Carter was exploring the tomb when this book was written.  Cookbooks from the last century fascinate—hidden within are forensic footprints of a national diet gone wrong. It's a crime scene.

The Delineator was a woman’s magazine, founded in 1873, owned by the publisher Butterick, a name still known for sewing patterns.  What were stylish people eating in 1930?  The answer was in New Delineator Recipes, which also included menus.  Here’s what I found:

Canned foods:  Convenience was a big selling point in the industrialization of food.  Ordinary folks couldn’t afford servants to cook so opening a can of factory-prepared food gave at least the feeling of servancy.   A photograph in the cookbook showed the variety of vegetables you could eat in a month—30—a great idea except all were canned.

Flavors:  What spices were used in recipes three generations ago?  It was pretty basic.  Mainly salt and pepper, with occasional paprika, or cayenne.  Add two sauces: Worcestershire and Tabasco.  Cinnamon or vanilla in desserts.  What’s changed in 82 years is the variety of flavors used today.

Dessert:  Maybe it’s because the book came out at the end of the roaring ‘20s, after a boom economy, but the book is big on dessert.  Ten special recipes by the cook Ann Batchelder, for example, included eight desserts; the other two were canned fish entrees.  Pudding were common but there was one healthy dessert from a new import: bananas flavored with lemon juice.

Menus:  Here’s the pattern of the dinner menus—meat, with potatoes, a vegetable, often canned, and, most days, a salad.  Meat was in the center of the plate—usually beef.  Animal products figured even bigger in the diet if you counted eggs and milk (guidance at that time was a quart each day).  And this leads us back to this week’s subject:  a meat sparing diet.

This Week’s Menu

Our menus lag by a week; we eat them first, then publish.  We had family over for the Academy Awards so there were leftovers for Monday, including a bowl of coleslaw.  It’s good to have a salad that will keep a few days.  The cooking adventure this week was beef stew—another way to eat vegetables seasoned with a little meat.

Monday

• Baked salmon.
• Brown rice with sauce.
• Bok Choy, steamed.

Tuesday

• Sweet potato, baked, with butter and brown sugar.
• Coleslaw with peanuts (recipe here).
• Peas (frozen).

Wednesday

• Beef stew (recipe here).
• Cornbread.
• Fresh pears (dessert).

Thursday  (a leftover meal)

• Beef stew
• Spinach salad
• Rice pudding (for dessert, made with the last of the brown rice)

A New Cookbook  

Old cookbooks show the evolution of food processing.  Here are four stages in the industrialization of food reflected in my 1930 cookbook:

1. In the late 1800s grains, once eaten with bran and germ intact were refined: rice was polished, roller mills produced fine white flour, and the corn degermer was invented.  Nutrients critical to health were lost but the grains were sweeter, whiter, and didn’t spoil. 
2. In the early 1900s hydrogenation was introduced resulting in Crisco shortening, margarine, and refined salad oil.  The market for olive oil, butter, and lard declined.  Gelatin was also introduced (think of Jello, a little gelatin, a lot of sugar, plus artificial flavor).
3. After WWI canned foods, a necessity for soldiers on the move but now a labor saving convenience, became part of the public diet.  Canned fruit served in Jello made a fancy if unhealthy dessert.
4. The war made the world a little smaller:  Pineapples were imported from Hawaii, bananas from Central America, and with the application of refrigeration to ships, meat was imported from Argentina. 

These changes continued throughout the 20^th century.  We see change as good, usually.  The late Steve Jobs was a change genius in the caliber of Thomas Edison or Henry Ford.  The beautiful wife loves her iPod; I use a Mac computer.  But the changes brought by the industrialization of food were generally a bad idea that must be reversed in the 21^st century.  It’s time to rewrite our cookbooks. 

Please comment:  What is your favorite healthy cookbook.  Comment and we’ll make a list of the top ten. 

Comments

[Anna]

I really love America's Test Kitchen's Family cookbook. I'd reccommend their Mushroom Barley soup as one of the best meatless meals I've had. And the Apple crisp is to die for amazing for a special occasion

[Kjirsti]

I've loved every recipe I've made from Super Natural Every Day by Heidi Swanson. The recipes are quick, usually one pot works, but brimming with flavor and nutrients! Her blog 101cookbooks is an superb online source for healthy recipes.

[Laura]

My favorite healthy cookbook, because I don't have very many cookbooks, would be Spelt Heathy. It is all about a grain. It isn't only bread recipes, but there are definitely plenty in there.

[Em]

(as I mentioned on my comment on last post) America's Test Kitchen HEALTHY Family Cookbook
Healthy Bread in 5 minutes a day
Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads
and The Best Vegetable Recipes (from Cook's Illustrated)
Liz Franklin's Organic Seasonal Cookbook
Fine Cooking's "In Season"

[catania]

I love the cookbook Fresh and Fast by Marie Simmons.

[Susan T]

I'll second Super Natural Every Day.
Mediterranean Harvest by Martha Rose Shulman (her recipes can also be found in the NY times, this is a vegetarian cookbook, we especially love the 'greens with currants and pine nuts' recipe)
Ancient Grains for Modern Meals by Maria Speck (love the quinoa with zucchini)

[Denae]

I'll third Super Natural Every Day by Heidi Swanson. Everything I've made is very good. She has an amazing way with adding flavor in a healthy way. Another cookbook that intrigues me is Plenty by Ottolenghi. Amazing combinations and all meatless, just like Swanson's book.

[Jamie]

I really like Ellie Krieger's cookbooks. I use the recipes all the time, and even my 3 yr old asks for broccoli now. :) Her ideas for vegetables are simple, healthy, and quick.

[Rill]

I don't think I have any cookbooks that I would say "That's definitely the healthy one." When I have tried to find 'healthy' cookbooks they're the same recipes as the regular cookbooks but they're fat free/sugar free/lots of lean proteins. So I look at vegetarian cookbooks and they're mostly full of faux meats! I think I just need to look harder.

Luckily I've learned enough about cooking to tweak nearly recipes to fit my definition of healthy. That's a good thing most of the time except when someone asks for a recommendation for a strictly healthy cookbook. ~_^

Looking forward to seeing the list! I love collecting cookbooks. Especially old ones!

[Julie-Lynn]

I love Eating Well magazine. Sorry- I know it isn't a book. It has lots of season specific recipes especially for those of us who live in a very short growing season.

[skip hellewell]

Rill

You make a good point, Truly healthy cookbooks are rare. Most follow the party line of what's healthy at that time, or in style. So recent cookbooks avoid saturated fats, even though our bodies, like the animals, contain saturated fats and we've eaten them safely for millenia. Vegetarian cookbooks often contain the soy-based highly-processed faux meats. Then there's the silliness of using the whites of the eggs, while discarding the yolks. Truly healthy cookbooks are rare.

[Lisa]

I have never found a great, healthy cookbook. As was stated previously, the "healthy" cookbooks just take unhealthy recipes and change them up a bit to have less calories or less fat, but they aren't using better quality (in a more natural state) ingredients. Eating soy makes me very ill, so I find it frustrating when I pick up a vegetarian cookbook and find that it isn't mostly vegetables, it's mostly soy protein! Since when did we need so much darn protein? :)

[Jeanette]

I really like Martha Stewart's Everyday Food magazines. They are more low-key than the party/special occasion recipes from other magazines--most of them are about 30-min. recipes. They will often feature seasonal vegetables. They regularly include vegetarian meals, and it is almost all whole unprocessed food ingredients, with the occasional recipe for candy bar cookies or something thrown in. I think there are two Everyday Food cookbooks, but mostly I just refer to the magazines for great, easy, healthy recipes.

[Jo]

Green Smoothie Girls 12 steps to whole foods. It is a great book and goes perfectly with what this blog talks about. She uses no meat and very little dairy. The focus is on whole foods naturally. I use it for most of my meals.

[Katherine]

I have three "top cookbooks." The first is "Cooking in the Moment" by Andrea Reusing, which is--like most of the "healthy" cookbooks that I like, based on the seasons. Another is "Tender: A Cook and his vegetable patch" by Nigel Slater, which offers a lot of different options for cooking vegetables. I also like "Chez Panisse Vegetables" by Alice Waters for the same reason.

[Nikol]

One of my favorite cookbooks is called The Dreaded Broccoli cookbook by Barbara Haspel. Even beyond the receipes, the book is really fun to read. The authors (a mother and daughter team) have a really fun approach to cooking. Recipes are uncomplicated and delicious - at least the ones I've tried. And all aim at being healthy. Highly recommended!

[Jenna]

My grandmother presented her grandfather's cookbook to me shortly after we were married. I need to get it out and thumb through it and start utilizing the wisdom of the ages a little bit more.

I think Mark Bittman's "How To Cook Everything" is a must in every kitchen, but a better choice by him if you're looking for something that focuses more on whole grains and healthier eating is "The Food Matters Cookbook".

[Amy J]

Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes a Day-Hertzberg

*Natural Meals in Minutes-Bingham

Nourishing Traditions-Fallon

[Amy J]

I forgot to add--Natural Meals in Minutes is described as a "food storage" cookbook. I found it to be a great everyday cookbook! Incorporating whole grains, beans and legumes, nuts and seeds, etc. into our everyday diet should certainly not be relegated to "food storage cooking".

Two other favorites:

*The Little House Cookbook-Walker I love the simple recipes. How they made do with what they had. They are not all healthy (given what they had access to!) but really makes me think outside the box and how to use what fresh, simple ingredients I have. The gratitude and almost reverence they showed for the simplest of pleasures when it came to food really opened my eyes to what we take for granted today!

***Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook-Hensperger

I checked this out from the library last January and renewed until I had to return it....then decided I should just buy it!

Full of healthy, tasty recipes. Mostly fresh ingredients--very few canned or prepackaged items.

One commenter disliked the fact that they included recipes that could be made in less time on the stove or oven. I liked these recipes, because as a mom with young ones, the "dinner hour" is synonymous with the "witching hour"...so throwing stuff in the crockpot during happy play time in the afternoon makes dinner prep a breeze when everyone wants my attention! Similar with overnight oatmeal...I fresh roll my own oats. After playing around with the overnight oatmeal recipes in this book I was inspired to throw the whole groats in the night before. Waking up to oatmeal that can be scooped and served (and a yummy smelling kitchen!) when little ones will soon by clamoring for my attention is a busy momma's dream come true!

[Linsey]

I love Power Foods from Whole Living. My favorite part is the first half of the book is a glossary of the healthiest foods and what nutrients they have, how to store them, tips on preparation, etc.