About Vintage Cookbook

Holiday gift certificates!  Of course we offer custom gift certificates.  Just ask: chell.cara@gmail.com

 

My Mission

Vintage Cookbook @VintageCookbook.com has been selling antique, vintage, rare first edition American cookbooks online since 1996, keeping prices affordable with our small town overhead, prices made possible because VintageCookbook.com lives in the workroom at the back of my house in Baraboo, Wisconsin. The cost of living here is low, very low. You won’t find New York City prices at VintageCookbook!

About Vintage Cookbooks

I’m an academic turned online merchant of vintage goods. I completed a Ph.D. in English and American Studies, taught Women’s Studies and American literature, and was a university administrator. Then, I chose to stay at home with my daughter and opened an online antique store, Easy Street Antiques, in 1995. In 1996, concentrating on items of special interest to me and to many women, vintage handbags and vintage cookbooks, I opened online vintage stores VintageBag.com and VintageCookbook.com.

I look for antique cookbooks, vintage cookbooks, and rare cookbooks that are straight out of the history I used to study and teach. Actually, if you are an antique cookbook collector, you already know that cookbooks ARE history. For example, Mrs. Lincoln’s Boston Cookbook, first published in 1896, certainly gives us a good review of technology in the United States when Mrs. Lincoln devotes a great deal of energy and space into her sections on “Fire,” “Fuel,” and “The Making and Care of a Coal Fire.”

The Settlement Cook Book (famous for its slogan, “The way to a man’s heart), first published in 1909, was compiled by Mrs. Simon Kander and provides a fascinating glimpse into the history of education in the United States. Mrs. Kander compiled “Tested Recipes from The Settlement Cooking Classes, The Milwaukee Public School Kitchens, The School of Trades for Girls, and Experienced Housewives.”

Cookbooks historically have shown how the country reacts to important national events. For example, Woman’s Home Companion Cook Book’s 1944 “Wartime Postscript” talks about the patriotism of American homemakers in cope with rationing, and suggests recipes that could be made, for example, when you have almost no sugar.

Cookbooks like Fine Old Dixie Recipes, with its idealized drawings of African American slaves, certainly tell us a great deal about American history.

Social Networking

Please like us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/vintagecookbook, where you can find vintage recipes from all the classic cookbooks! Please follow us on Twitter @vintagecookbook! When you follow us on Twitter you’ll know immediately when we post new cookbooks and when we do mark downs!

And don’t forget to click on “Recipes” at the top of the VintageCookbook.com Homepage. You’ll find one great recipe from many of the great antique and
vintage cookbooks.

Shipping Policy

We ship nearly all cookbooks via USPS priority mail, guaranteeing delivery in at least three days.  If the order is especially large or especially heavy, we reserve the right to ship via media mail.  With 95% of all orders, we ship the next day after receiving payment.  If we receive your payment on Tuesday, we will ship your order on Wednesday.   Two or three times a year we go on the road to buy cookbooks.  If we are out-of-town, we will notify you via email and give you options. During Christmas season, we ALWAYS ship the day after receiving the order. The United States Postal service does a pretty good job with Christmas shipping. If you place an order before December 21, we’ll get it to you by Christmas.

Descriptions
There’s a limit to the number of words I can type.  So, we use stock descriptors, including the following:

As-if-new condition:  goes without saying.  We also sometimes say mint or pristine.

Excellent antique (or vintage) condition:  Cookbook is basically sound.  May have some spots on pages, may have weak hinges, etc.

Good antique (or vintage) condition:  Cookbook has a number of problems.  Probably not gift quality.

Use of Stock Photos

Yes, we use stock photos or jpgs.  We don’t take new photographs of every Betty Crocker’s Cookbook or of every Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook.  We might take a new one, if there is something special about that cookbook, if it is in particularly good condition or if it is in particularly poor condition.  We match the photo to the cookbook.  But the photo will not necessarily be of the cookbook offered for sale.

Holiday gift certificates!  Of course we offer custom gift certificates.  Just ask: chell.cara@gmail.com