Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project

Full-text reproductions of 76 historic American cookbooks are available on a website created by the Michigan State University Libraries and profiled in the February 2005 issue of Gourmet magazine.

Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project" was a two-year digitization project funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The MSU Libraries partnered with the MSU Museum to create the site.

The 76 cookbooks featured on the Feeding America site include some of the most significant works in American culinary history, including a 1798 printing of Amelia Simmons' American Cookery, the first published cookbook by an American author. The site also includes early works by the "great ladies" of American cookery, such as Eliza Leslie, Lydia Maria Child, and Fannie Farmer.

Other works in the collection represent popular cookbook genres of the 19th century, including church and charity cookbooks, early works on nutrition, ethnic and regional cookbooks, and recipe brochures produced to advertise specific products.

The site features an essay and background material by Jan Longone, a nationally-known culinary historian; biographical sketches of the cookbook authors; a glossary of historic culinary terms; and multidimensional images of cooking tools and artifacts from the collection of the MSU Museum.

The text of each cookbook has been transcribed and made searchable, enabling users to search across the collection for recipes to produce specific dishes or to use specific ingredients. The cookbook texts can be viewed in the user's web browser as JPG images or as HTML pages, and can be downloaded as PDF documents for ease of printing.

The Feeding America project was headed by Dr. Peter Berg, assistant director for Special Collections at the MSU Libraries, and by Dr. Michael Seadle, assistant director for Systems and Digital Services at the MSU Libraries. The project manager was Ruth Ann Jones.

Visit the Feeding America website at http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/cookbooks/

For more information, contact the project manager: Ruth Ann Jones, Digital & Multimedia Center, Michigan State University Libraries. Email: jonesr@msu.edu.