The New Home Cook Book. 1923. With Oven Cooking Guide for Wood-Fire, Gas and Electricity; Record of Results; Time Table for Cooking and Other Tables. Prepared by a Ladies Club in a friendly rivalry for the very best there is in tested recipes.
Springfield, Illinois: Published by Illinois State Register, 1923.
Octavo (19.75 x 13.5 cm.), 128 pages. Index. Title from cover. Stated "revised" (and thus, evident second) edition. A community cookbook that would appear annually under the imprint of the Illinois State Register – between 1922 and 1926, and identified from 1923 as “Latest Revised Edition” – compiled by a Ladies Club of undeclared affiliation. With five hundred unattributed recipes; standards, for the most part: Brown Bread, Corn Soup, Salmon Croquettes, Swiss Steak, Pea Salad, Harvard Beets, Cheese Straws, Sunshine Cake, Hermit Cookies, Rhubarb Custard Pie – but also Ginger Water, Pine[apple Apri]cot Preserves, Pear Honey, and Binola (with walnuts, cherries, and bananas). A point of pride, evidently, is conveyed by a prominent remark on the cover: “Items on separate lines” (that is, recipe ingredients listed prior to instructions). ~ Under one variant of the name or other, the daily Illinois State Register had been among the myriad rival newspapers in Illinois famously competing for the attention of Springfield during the formative years of Abraham Lincoln and through the end of the nineteenth century. In 1891 it was reconstituted and for many years played the role of afternoon rival to the Illinois State Journal, until they merged in 1974. As the only named entity on the cover of The New Home Cook Book, the publisher may have had a stake in the contest alluded to there. A mystery, then: presumably a fundraiser whose beneficiaries are deliberately veiled. ~ Some light staining to interior pages, and a few leaves exhibiting some wear. In publisher’s printed gray paper wrappers, titled in black. Near very good. [OCLC locates ten copies; Brown 628; not in Cagle].
Price: $50.00