Food Studies in Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books: Other Resources

Because food is integral to everyday life, there is not room in this guide for every culinary-connected item in our collections. Some other material types that connect to food and foodways are: 

• Diaries and commonplace books sometimes include food-related matters
• Ledgers contain details of sourcing and purchasing. The United States Sanitary Commission records, for example, enumerate supplies delivered during the Civil War.
• Mercantile records may contain information about the pricing and availability of comestibles. The Moses Taylor papers, for example, in part track sugar and sugar products (such as rum and molasses) in 19th century Cuba.
• Address books can contain the locations of favorite restaurants. In the Brooke Russell Astor address books, restaurants are listed under R.
• Correspondence between persons or organizations can relate stories of food and dining. For example, some of Dennis Halpern's papers in the Ecco Press records are letters coordinating reservations for his food writing. In the Lewis Gannett miscellaneous file, there is an exchange with the Library regarding the public perception of the tomato.

Das Menu: Eine culinarishe Studie and Feine Küche by Ernst von Malortie
A two-part work by German estate manager Ernst von Malortie, published in 1878 and 1887. In German and French.

The catalog of cookbooks
Published for The New York Public Library in 1981, this two-volume reference book serves as a guide to the culinary collection.

NYPL's Culinary History Webpage
This webpage gives excellent pointers about where to find culinary history materials across NYPL. It includes bibliographies, additional subject headings, and further resources.

Lunch Hour NYC
This 2012 exhibition looks back at more than a century of New York lunches, when the city’s early power brokers invented what was yet to be called “power lunch,” local charities established a 3-cent school lunch, and visitors with guidebooks thronged Times Square to eat lunch at the Automat.

Biodiversity Heritage Library
This online library contains images of complete texts, including many items which were created to support food and agriculture. In addition to works on gardening and animal life, there is a rich collection of digitized seed catalogs. 

HathiTrust Digital Library
HathiTrust contains a wide variety of full-text searchable published resources, including many from the 20th century. This is helpful to find recipes and food mentions in sources not usually found in a typical survey for recipes, such as this first published recipe for smores ("Some More")

Gastronomic bibliography by Katherine Golden Bitting
Food chemist Katherine Golden Bitting published a list of some 6,000 items about food, preparation, and dining. The bibliography is available on HathiTrust, and Bitting's own collection is part of the Library of Congress. In English.

Bibliographie gastronomique by Georges Vicaire
A bibliography about food and dining from 1890. In French.

English cookery books to the year 1850 by A.W. Oxford
Chronological list of English cookery books, 1500 to 1850. In English.

Bibliography of American cookery books, 1742-1860 by Waldo Lincoln
490 titles of American cookery, published in 1929. Lincoln's own collection went the American Antiquarian Society. In English, found on the Internet Archive.

Bibliotheca Bacchica by André L. Simon
Two-volume French text on wine and viniculture. The first volume is Incunables organized by date (beginning with the Gutenberg bible), and the second is Seizième siècle - 16th century works organized by author.

A short-title catalogue of household and cookery books published in the English tongue, 1701-1800 by Virginia Maclean

Handlist of Italian cookery books by Lord Westbury
Collector Baron Richard Morland Tollemache Bethell Westbury contributed volume 42 to an Italian bibliography effort. In English and Italian.