I ADORE old cookbooks.  Some people like to  curl up with a good book... I curl up with old cookbooks. I love the fact that many have notes in the margins from their previous owners and stuff. And yes, I actually read them as if they were a novel... I don't just "look at" recipes, I actually read each one... even for food and things I don't like! I have always been like that since a little girl. Some of my favorites are ones that were wedding gifts for my grandmothers... "Modern Priscilla" and "Butterick" cookbooks from the 20's. Then there are ones from my aunts that are from the 30's and 40's for cooking with limited means... during the depression and rationing due to the war.

I'm such a weenie!

Some Ive found have helped me with eating more natural, less fat and even vegeterian..Some of the old books have techniques and recipes you cant find anywhere...Though I only allow myself to keep an old book if it has MANY recipes Id like..Otherwise I tend to copy the few recipes I like (Like form this huge 2 book set of polish(I think) recipes and then when I can pass em along..Some are VERY old..Some somewhat..Id like to find more from the times of the depression and when people tended to make do and make their own..

I must love them....I have way too many!  

I can't give up my cookbooks - just keep adding to them.  I'm somewhere around 700 right now.  Recently I received one for my birthday that was written and published in South Afrida.  My nephew's FIL has a business there & purchased two of them his last trip.  I love it!

My mother reads cookbooks for the fun of it.  She loves to read Menu's too! 

How cool to know that I'm not alone in reading cookbooks and menus!

I don't exactly collect old cookbooks, we don't have enough space for them, but I do love the few that I have. One was published during WW1 and is full of tips for war time cooking.  I also have a few published during WWII which include tips for rationing, victory gardens, scrap metal drives, etc. A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband reads like a novel. 

I love them for the now outdated advice and the added notes and recipes that previous owners included.  Just the history of them is fascinating to me.  

I used to... but I found that I never cooked from them (preferring to cook from brand new cook books instead). After watching several episodes of Hoarders and having a grandmother that was a hoarder, I have an intense fear of collecting stuff just to have it. So, I went through all my cookbooks and sent all the ones I'd never used to the local Goodwill. Right now, a cookbook has to be very odd or different to get my attention. Last one I bought was called: Irish Pub Food. How weird is that ?

At least I'm not alone... Emilie you have me beat, I'm at just over 200. I love the small ones from the 20's up, and the church/community ones. Virginia...I also read them like a novel..lol. I have had to control myself though..I have only recieved 4 from here and 3 were in a 3 for 1 deal. What with my latest addiction to cozy mysteries, I'm running out of room! 

I too also enjoy old cookbooks, I tend pick these up at thrift stores, and flea markets!!!

I tend to collect cookbooks more than cook from them. . . I have them in the kitchen, living room, bedroom, office, etc.  I just can't seem to get enough of them, LOL!!

Yes!  I love cookbooks!  And old recipe boxes full of recipes...  I also print alot of recipes from the internet.  Foodnetwork.com and Allrecipes.com are my 2 fave sites.  I have three 3-ring binders full of internet recipes :)

Internet recipes are the best!  I have been letting go of some of my cookbooks, tho, as a result of   1.)  running out of space     2.) only used it for one recipe and found hundreds of better ones on internet.

but the old ones are the best.  Simple food prepared simply and healthily.  My Mom has some good ones and the only thing I want is those.  The others can have the diamonds and funiture!

Been collecting them for years!

Anyone tired of their cookbooks can send them to me!!     The strangest one I have has to be my Marijuana Cookbook.  I haven't cooked anything from it (Honest, Officer) but it has some interesting recipes in it!!

I've been collecting cookbooks for nearly 50 years and I really LOVE them.  How nice to know that I'm not the only person who reads them like novels!  My oldest is from Gold Medal Flour - 1896  and I have my Grandmother's Fanny Farmer from 1917.  It's the cookbook I used to learn all the "how to's".

Katz

I really enjoyed reading this "thread" . . . .  my contribution to it is to tell how, as a little girl in the 30s, being raised by my maternal grandmother, I would pore through her The White House Cookbook, with the glossy page at the front with the full-length portrait of the First Lady , , , , , , Grandma and Grandpa were married in December, 1898, and I suppose she got the cookbook around then.   Anyhow, it was one of the few books in the house, so that's why I pored over it.

The other tidbit I can contribute is about the small paperback I found when I visited a second-hand bookshop a few years ago to find something about vegetarian cooking.  It was from one of those 'hippie" communes where they made vegetable gardens and orchards, kept goats and bees, etc. , stuff like that.   And it had photos of the young men and women in those duds they wore around the time of Woodstock!    My two granddaughters (sisters) had both become vegetarians, and I wanted some information on what the implications of that would be when they ate at my house.  Before that happened, I'd never heard of TVP (total vegetable protein),  and I kinda worried about them getting enough protein in their diet.     I mean, I LIKE beans and split peas and nuts, and eggs and cheese, but would they really supply the protein of meat and fish?

Well, it's now a few years later, and both of those girls are quite healthy, and I have learned something about the vegetarian diet.   One girl is an ova-lacto-begetarian, the other is a pesco-ova-lacto vegetarian.  And I've developed a couple of recipes they both can eat, and they like.

If any of you haven't read Jill Conner Browne's Sweet Potato Queens books (in which she includes recipes), you would have fun browsing them.  Try making the "White Trash Trifle" . . . . .