International flavor comes to America: Early Ethnic cookbooks February 9, 2020 – Posted in: Bookselling / Collecting, Content, Exhibits, Special Collections

Chinese-Japanese Cook Book by Sara Bosse and Onoto Watanna [pseud.], Chicago, Rand McNally [c1914]. First Edition The folks at Rare Books Digest have put together an informative list of first appearances of various ethnic cookbooks in America. From the 1828 first American publication of a French cookbook to the first Greek cookbook that, amazingly enough, wasn’t published in this country until 1942! Here’s a sampling. El cocinero español by Encarnación Pinedo. San Francisco, 1898. This…

Computer-assisted cooking: IBM puts Chef Watson to work April 22, 2015 – Posted in: Books and Technology, Content, Video

Remember a few years back when IBM’s incredible computing machine Watson appeared on the television quiz show Jeopardy!? Well, like most technologies a lot has changed since then. Watson’s system performance is 2400% greater than in the Jeopardy! days and it has gone from the size of a master bedroom to three stacked pizza boxes! Now Watson enters a whole new realm, from simply being a storehouse of vast amounts information to now being able to actually create new knowledge. And one…

"Cooking With Poo" Again March 30, 2012

And the winner of The Bookseller magazine’s Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title for 2012 goes to Cooking with Poo, by Saiyuud Diwong. Poo is the author’s nickname, it also happens to the Thai word for crab. From the author’s website: Khun Poo is thrilled to be launching her first cookbook ‘Cooking with Poo’ which includes over 100 pages of her delicious recipes, glossy pictures and also wonderful stories about her neighbours and the Klong…

The Books in Julia Child’s Kitchen June 10, 2011

In 2001 Julia Child gave her kitchen to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. The kitchen, designed by her husband Paul, was where millions of Americans watched as Child worked her culinary magic on her incredibly popular public-television series. The kitchen bookshelf Christine Klepper, a Museum Studies graduate student at The George Washington University, has been spending some time in the kitchen working with the books. Her recent post on the blog of the…

Gourmet’s Famine Is Library’s Feast December 16, 2009

The Premiere Issue Of Gourmet Magazine, January 1941. When publisher Conde Nast sliced Gourmet Magazine from its line-up in October 2009, foodies nationwide mourned the passing of a culinary standby. The cooking bible had been published for nearly 70 years, providing inspiration to professional chefs, amateur cooks, and readers who didn’t know Escoffier from Le Creuset, but took a pornographic delight in superbly styled, sensual shots of sinfully rich repasts. But at least one librarian…