The Edwardsville cook book

From the librarian's dossier · AI-generated, grounded in the scanned text

The Edwardsville Cook Book is a 1906 community fundraising cookbook compiled for the Manse Fund of the First Presbyterian Church of Edwardsville, Illinois. Like many church and charitable cookbooks of its era, it gathers recipes contributed by named local women, presenting a portrait of American domestic cooking at the turn of the twentieth century. The book moves through the full range of household cookery: breads and yeast preparations, meats and poultry, fish and seafood, soups, vegetables, salads and dressings, pickles and catsups, pies, puddings, cakes, cookies, frozen desserts, candies, preserves, and a substantial closing section devoted to invalid cookery and household hints. With 390 anchored food records and a single medicinal record, the collection is overwhelmingly a culinary reference, though it also reflects the period's blending of cooking, home remedies, and nursing care for the sick. Attributions to contributors and their locations appear throughout, underscoring the book's identity as a collaborative community project rather than a single author's work. Readers today will find both familiar dishes, such as chicken pie and pound cake, and dishes and practices distinctive to the era, including salt rising bread, invalid broths, and diabetic recipes contributed by a physician. The book offers a window into regional domestic life, church fundraising culture, and the household economy of early 1900s small-town Illinois.

The book is organized into numbered chapters that follow a traditional cookbook progression: breads and baked goods (section 1), meats and poultry followed by fish, soups, vegetables, and salads (sections 1-2), salad dressings, pickles, catsups, pies, and puddings (section 3), puddings and cakes (section 4), cakes, cookies, gingerbreads, and frozen desserts (sections 4-5), frozen desserts, candies, preserves, miscellaneous household items, and invalid cookery (section 6), and a final concentrated section on invalid and sick-room cookery along with household hints and advertisements (section 7). Chapter numbers (Chapter I through at least Chapter XIV) are used throughout, with headings marking transitions between food categories. Recipes are consistently attributed to named contributors and their locations, reflecting the book's compiled, multi-author origin as a fundraising project.