Primary Sources (United States History)

"Not by Bread Alone" explores the influences and inventions that have shaped American food habits over the past two hundred years.

The Cornell University, “Making of America” site includes many 19th and 20th century periodicals that will include some history of food/food science content

Discover food's journey through farms and factories across the United States. Step into the kitchen and explore how home cooking has changed in America over time. Trace the development of groceries and markets in the United States. Dig into the history of American restaurants. Browse menus, photographs, and other objects. Discover the impact of war on how soldiers and civilians ate. Investigate the historic connections between the American diet and social justice movements.

Over 3,300 advertising items and publications dating from 1850 to 1920, illustrating the rise of consumer culture and the birth of a professionalized advertising industry in the United States.

Vintage Cocktail Books Free Digital Library The E.U.V.S. stands for Exposition Universelle des Vins et Spiritueux, which refers to a Museum create by Paul Ricard in Bendor Island in south of France. The Museum is dedicated to the History of Wines and Spirits with a beautiful collection of Old Bottles from around the world and Vintage Cocktail Books. This is the on-line access to the EUVS Vintage Cocktail Books Collection.

The Folger Photograph and Digital Imaging Department regularly generates lists of collections and cover-to-cover items that have recently been digitized (thousands of individual images may also be found in LUNA). This page provides links to the images found in LUNA Insights and to their Hamnet records.

This site has many digitized out-of-print cookbooks, culinary history books, and ephemera. There is also a section limited to "Cookbooks and Home Economics" at https://archive.org/details/cbk.

The history of the Lackawanna Valley as told through books, photographs, maps, videos, and other items. Hosted by the Scranton Public Library.

This collection presents 718 excerpts of sound recordings, 1,256 photographs, and 10 manuscripts from the American Folklife Center's Coal River Folklife Project Collection. The project documented traditional uses of the mountains in the Big Coal River Valley of southern West Virginia, and explored the cultural dimensions of ecological crisis from 1992 to 1999. There are extensive interviews with local residents on the seasonal harvesting of natural resources--ginseng, ramps (wild leeks), berries, nuts, fish, and game--on occupations, including coal mining and lumbering; and on the impact of large scale industries such as logging and mountaintop removal mining on local communities. Cultural and religious community events were a focus of the project, including storytelling, community dinners and foodways, baptisms, and cemetery customs.

The scope of the Food and Foodways collection of archived websites is broad, reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of food studies. The collection provides an inclusive space for food-related sites proposed by nominators from a wide spectrum of subject areas and specialties.

This collection makes available online approximately 1,900 posters created between 1914 and 1920. Most relate directly to the war. A smaller subset of the posters relate to food supplies and food propaganda from multiple sides of the war.

Handwritten cookbooks, circa 1600s-1960s, documenting culinary history in America and Europe and how tastes have changed over the years.

This site includes more than 1,800 books and pamphlets published by the USDA between the 1880s and 1980s. They related to foods, home economics, and agriculture.

UTSA’s Mexican Cookbook Collection is comprised of more than 2,000 cookbooks, from 1789 to the present, with most books dating from 1940-2000. In addition to broad general coverage, the collection includes concentrations in the areas of regional cooking, healthy and vegetarian recipes, corporate advertising cookbooks, and manuscript recipe books. A selection of the materials from this collection have been digitized and are available online, including manuscript cookbooks from the collection. These handwritten recipe books provide an intimate view of domestic life and Mexican culinary culture. Also available online is the extremely rare 1828 cookbook, Arte nuevo de cocina y repostería acomodado al uso mexicano, once owned by Diana Kennedy.

UTSA’s Mexican Cookbook Collection is comprised of more than 2,000 cookbooks, from 1789 to the present, with most books dating from 1940-2000. In addition to broad general coverage, the collection includes concentrations in the areas of regional cooking, healthy and vegetarian recipes, corporate advertising cookbooks, and manuscript recipe books. A selection of the materials from this collection have been digitized and are available online, including manuscript cookbooks from the collection. These handwritten recipe books provide an intimate view of domestic life and Mexican culinary culture. Also available online is the extremely rare 1828 cookbook, Arte nuevo de cocina y repostería acomodado al uso mexicano, once owned by Diana Kennedy.

The digitized historical cookbooks in this collection date from the 1700s to the 1900s. Mostly American and British, they contain not only recipes, but also elegant engravings of table settings and cooking paraphernalia, home remedies and cure-all tonics, instructions on managing servants, and more. In short, these gastronomical treasures reveal much about the societies and economic times that created them.

The menu collection originated through the energetic efforts of Miss Frank E. Buttolph (1850-1924), a somewhat mysterious and passionate figure, whose mission in life was to collect menus. In 1899, she offered to donate her existing collection to the Library -- and to keep collecting on the Library's behalf. Miss Buttolph added to the collection of more than 25,000 menus until her death in 1924. The collection has continued to grow through additional gifts of graphic, gastronomic, topical or sociological interest, especially but not exclusively New York-related. About two thirds of the menus are American; more than half come from New York restaurants; and most date from 1890 to 1910.

The Culinary Institute of America’s special collection of over 40,000 historical menus includes menus from CIA restaurants and donations from major menu collectors, including George Lang, Chapman S. Root, Vinnie Oakes, and Roy Andries de Groot. Assembled over decades, the collection illustrates the history of dining in America and abroad, with menus from all of the states and over 80 countries, as well as ships, railroads and airlines.

A database of menus from Los Angeles, other cities, steamships, airlines and banquets. Images of the actual menus are being added. The address and telephone number of the restaurant is given, plus the menu date, cuisine type, meal, and price range.

The majority of menus selected for this digital project came from the Bohn-Bettoni Collection, which consists of approximately 2000 restaurant menus dating from 1870-1930.