My Favorite Cook Book

Sitting in my living room, I am telling my friends that not every culinary idea discovered is really new under the sun, but that many have in fact been thought of before. As proof, I describe a cook book I inherited from my mother. A collection of independent booklets, "The Ground Meat Cookbook", "The Lunch Box Cookbook," "The Chocolate Cookbook," etc., that are printed with colorful covers and bound into two volumes.  Homemakers in the 1950s acquired these from a grocery store - I think it was A&P - but do not know for sure. When I produce two maroon and white binders, they do not look familiar to my friends, but when the colorful booklets inside appear, they both recall, "my mother had these, my aunt had these!"

The reason the books caused my observation that nothing was really new is because these volumes, published by the Culinary Arts Institute of Chicago Director, Melanie Proft and the Staff Home Economists, contain many wonderful recipes with variations.  Instead of searching online to look for something different or unique, I can open their pages and search within.

Some of the recipes are outdated.  For instance several booklets include recipes calling for monosodium glutamate. This is not on my personal list of ingredients for wholesome food, but others may disagree. The Holiday book includes recipes for civic holidays such as Washington and Lincoln's birthdays (before they were combined into Presidents Day) and 4th of July as well as New Years Day, St. Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. There are no recipes for holiday celebrations such as Passover, or Lunar New Year. This made me feel excluded for the moms who were presented with these books from the local supermarket when they were young women raising families but practiced a holiday that was not represented.

I searched the web for Melanie Proft and found that a Collectible copy of the two volume binder in very good condition was being sold for $250.  Mine are not in very good condition, but I am not interested in parting with them even if they were.  They are my own little piece of interesting culinary history.