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steeley

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The first records of recipes being put down in print or scroll's or tablets .
here are some through the ages .

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The meats included beef, lamb, goat, pork, deer and fowl - the birds provided both meat and eggs. Fish were eaten along with turtles and shellfish. Various grains, vegetables and fruits such as dates, apples, figs, pomegranates and grapes were integral to the ancient Near Eastern diet. Roots, bulbs, truffles and mushrooms were harvested for the table. Salt added flavor to the food as did a variety of herbs. Honey as well as dates, grape-juice and raisins were used as sweeteners. Milk, clarified butter and fats both animal fats and vegetable oils, such as sesame, linseed and olive oils were used in cooking.

Many kinds of bread are mentioned in the texts from the lowliest barley bread used for workers' rations to elaborate sweetened and spiced cakes baked in fancy, decorated moulds in palace kitchens.

Beer (usually made of fermented barley mush) was the national beverage already in the third millennium BC, while wine grown in northern Mesopotamia was expensive and only enjoyed by the royal household or the very rich.

This tablet includes 25 recipes for stews, 21 are meat stews and 4 are vegetable stews. The recipes list the ingredients and the order in which they should be added, but does not give measures or cooking time - they were clearly meant only for experienced chefs.

YBC 4644 from the Old Babylonian Period, ca. 1750 BC

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which brings us to the oldest cookbook.
FORME OF CURY

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and a recipe for hare.
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cooking for the royals bourgeois.
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salmon in champagne
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well my image host has been acting up sorry have to add to this when the bug is worked out.
 
Great, I look forward to this. But don't forget about Apicius :)

Stefan
 
Great theme. Looking forward to more. Great stuff.
 
Great stuff

I once got a chance to buy "just" one hundred years old english cookbook.

What struck me was that back then the fillet steak was the cheapest cut of meat, just cause It wasnt fatty or available on the bone.

This just made me thinking, bollocks nouvelle cuisine, bollocks Blumenthal. Its just a trend.
 
Think my oldest cookbook is from the early 1900's I have a ton of early 30's and 40's product flier recipes, lol some scary stuff with Frito Leys :p
 
Ok well give it a go.

this post is brought to in honor of DR. Stefan

APICIUS de re culinaria is a set of books using the name of the roman glutton and gourmet Marcus Gavius Apicius in the 9th century.
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The oldest collection of recipes to survive from antiquity, De Re Coquinaria ("The Art of Cooking") is attributed to Marcus Gavius Apicius, the famed epicure who flourished during the reign of Tiberius early in the first century AD"in imitation of Apicius" ate camel heels, cockscombs, the tongues of peacocks and nightingales, the brains of flamingos and thrushes, partridge eggs, the heads of parrots and pheasants, and the beards of mullets.

this copy is from 1483
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The oldest cookbook very well may be by Apicius, but that is not to say that he was the first epicure. That was Archestratus, a Sicilian Greek whose fourth-century BC poem on gastronomy survives only in the sixty or so fragments preserved in the Deipnosophists of Athenaeus. In reading them, one is struck by his emphasis on simplicity and insistence that a delicate fish be sprinkled only with a little salt and basted with olive oil, "for it contains the height of pleasure within itself"

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some recipes
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Now fast forward to the 1700's to THE COMPLEAT HOUSEWIFE
commonly carried to the new world and the first cookbook to be published in the United States.

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This is a very interesting cookbook from 1896 from Francois Tanty whom worked with CAREME.
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Herring in Papillotte
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The White House Cookbook 1890
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General Lee Birthday
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The Fannie Farmer cookbook 1914
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Boy howdy, I just LOVE me some Liebstoeckl!!
 
Hope you enjoyed this post there is so much to culinary history this is just a bit.

SO what is the oldest cookbook in your collection or the one you cherish .
I'LL post mind in a bit .

Steeley

PS : Most of the old cookbook are online and you can copy them from different digital library's .
 
Liebstoeckl= celery

Silpium= garlic

one of the most used condiment was GARUM a fish sauce like the one we know of.
 
My great grand mother's Betty Crocker book. My mom has it now but I have already called dibs on it. I would say late 50's. It looks similar to this, not as nice. was used a lot more than this one.
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Our oldest has a first printing of 1901, the current edition from 1965, another is from 1932, the current one from 1942. They get used, too! They are interesting for foundational recipes.
 
Where the heck did recipes go wrong?? These are the way recipes should look. Just simple instructions on how to make a thing, all assuming you aren't lobotomized.

I want to make most of this now.

I have to say I've never boiled honey. And those recipes from Apicus sounds like Sally Fallon recipes.
 
Oh yeah, and General Lee wouldn't know Amontillado from Sherry!!
 
My mom has the one from 1956 dang good book.

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Haven't found the pics of my older books, will have to look them up :)
 
one of my favorites is ART OF CUISINE
a beautiful book .
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people often tear out the pages and frame them i bought a second book so i could use menu pages.
so if you see one make sure all the pages are there.
 
Came across a real nice find today .
The Grocer's Encyclopedia 1911
A-Z on the product of the period and nice graphics.

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Few more from that book
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We talk of getting Heritage chickens today look what they had 100 years ago.
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