This is a collection of website links that I’ve used in historic cooking.
Cookbook List – This list is from my own website and sadly hasn’t been updated since 2010, but it includes a list of cookbooks used by historic cooks at living history museums/sites.
Directory List of Online Cookbook Sources – When I first started this list online cookbooks were only slowing becoming a thing. Now there are lots of them. This website is a directory of different collections of online cookbooks to help you better find what you want.
Find a list of my cooking related blog posts under the tag “In the Kitchen with Laura.” If you want to know about my program where I combine stories of Laura’s life with historic foodways I have 2 versions (set in the 1890s and the 1930s) and they’re both also called “In the Kitchen with Laura.“
Historic Foodways Links From My Blogroll
1906 Cookbook– This blog started back in 2012 by a historic cook/re-enactor. The blog started as her project to do a deep look at The Berlin Cook Book. This was a fundraising cookbook meaning it was put together with recipes from different cooks across a neighborhood and then sold to raise money for a charity. There are only a few known copies and they don’t know what charity it was for. revenue supported. It was published in 1906 by the Berlin News Record. It hasn’t been really active in awhile, but it still has good stuff like cooking with canned salmon. You can watch videos of Parks Canada baking a few recipes.
Colonial Williamsburg Food– Sadly Colonial Williamsburg used to have an entire page dedicated to food with links to cookbooks, recipes, blog posts, and videos. However, it has fallen prey to the current website design ideas of lots of photos = good / lots of useful information = bad. The Internet Archive version is still there, but going off the main page just gets you broken links. I changed this link to go to their current “Trade: Cook” page. Click on the box marked recipes to find a little more. Searching for food on the main site will only bring up restaurants. (Pssst! If you’re there you want George Washington’s first choice to eat at in Williamsburg eat at Christiana Campbell’s Tavern. We enjoyed it so much the first night we skipped Raleigh Tavern we had arranged for our second night and went back to Christiana’s again.)
Cooking in the Archive– This is a blog about updating recipes from 1600-1800 for use in a modern kitchen.
Early American Cookbooks – This is a collection of links to depositories of online cookbooks. I’m sure there are more, but this will take you to collections and links to other collections.
Editor’s Notebook– Editor’s Notebook was a blog by the editor of the late, lamented Food History News which is an excellent newsletter all about the history of food. It’s no longer published and the blog is no more, but this link will take you to the Internet Archive version of the blog. I do have a podcast episode featuring her Sandra Oliver.
Ep 94 Sandra Oliver and the Genealogy of a Recipe
Original Airdate November 17, 2017
Sandra Oliver, the former editor of Food History News and master food historian, joins us to go through the history of recipes. What stories do your recipes tell? How can you stir up the history of a recipe?
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/trundlebedtales/2017/11/17/ep-94-sandra-oliver-and-the-genealogy-of-a-recipe
Historic Foodie – This isn’t a very active blog, but each post has a bunch of interesting food history.
Kathleen Wall – This is my friend Kathleen Wall’s blog. She posts about things other than food and she’s pretty quiet now, but when she DOES post about food it’s really go so I’m leaving it here.
Pilgrim Seasonings– My friend Kathleen was involved with this one, too. It seems to have tapped out back in 2015, but thanks to Internet Archive this is what it looked like.
Researching Food History – This site is still active with multiple posts coming out every month. The posts are a dive into a particular subject with primary sources being either retyped or linked to. It covers a multitude of dates and subjects and looks best for browsing.
The Old Foodie– Between 2006 and 2015 the blog does what its slogan promises and includes a short article on food history complete with recipe for every weekday. But after 2015 it starts to slow down and from my own work I can tell you that’s a LOT of writing to keep current on. So there is a lot of interesting things and recipes available. Unfortunately the posts stop in 2017 without a goodbye post. The about me section says the author had written several books, but in all the years she kept the site current she didn’t get a list of them added.
Menus Online – This page was put together by The Old Foodie (see above) and doesn’t appear to have been updated since 2015, but it is a solid directory of collections of menus that are available online. Since this is an important topic for some food researchers I thought it was worth adding here. If one you want is dead, first go to the website in general and search for menus. If that fails take the URLs listed here and try them in the Wayback Machine on Internet Archive.
Sarah S. Uthoff is a nationally known Laura Ingalls Wilder authority and has presented at five of the Wilder homesites, many times at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, many conferences and numerous libraries, museums, and events around the Midwest. She is the main force behind Trundlebed Tales fighting to bring the History, Mystery, Magic, and Imagination of Laura Ingalls Wilder and other greats of children’s literature and history to life for a new generation. How can you help? Attend one of her programs, schedule one yourself, watch her videos, listen to her podcast, look at her photos, and find her on Facebook , Twitter , LinkedIn , SlideShare, and Academia.edu . Professionally she is a reference librarian at Kirkwood Community College and former director of the Oxford (Iowa) Public Library.
Sarah's Notebook 