A Slice of Toledo History: The Home Cook Book

What better way to celebrate Pi Day (in a Local History kind of way) than to peruse our local cookbook collection? One of our earliest cookbooks, The Home Cook Book, was printed in 1880 and one of its contributors was librarian Frances Delavan Jermain (1829-1905), of Toledo Public Library fame.

You can read about The Frances D. Jermain Branch Library in our Local History department, or learn more on the Internet Archive.

In the same manner as many early cookbooks, it also cites its philanthropic purpose. Our copy, housed in the Toledoana Collection of publications from local authors, is a third edition and also explains that its purpose was to provide guidance on table service and etiquette.

Looking for a pie recipe to share was nearly a fruitless endeavor. Like many historic recipe books, the author(s) applied a rather generous assumption that everyone was already a cook. Given that pies have historic roots back to Greek and even Egyptian cultures, that may explain why measurements and cooking directions are mostly vague or non-existent. While a dessert pie recipe would have been preferred, there wasn’t a single one available in this book. The following is a Chicken Pot-Pie Recipe from Mrs. F. D. J. herself!

Recipes aside, cookbooks from a particular era or group of contributors share a wealth of information about how the people lived that wrote them! The Home Cook Book features vintage ads which offer a glimpse of life for the average Toledoan and here are a few fun entries, ranging from refrigerators to kidney cures. Bon appetit!