4/27/05 | 250 Ways of Serving Potatoes
[ Currently Eating: Tea ]
Over the weekend, I went to a local rummage sale at a church near us. I’m always on the lookout for books, and food books at that. You really can’t beat the price of books at yard, garage and estate sales. I came across a goldmine of old books, more pamphlets than anything, printed by the Culinary Arts Institute in 1940. I’m serious, 1940!
The story with these books is that they used to be offered in the supermarkets for housewives looking for easy to prepare meals. Each book focuses on how to prepare different dishes out of one particular item or in one particular food genre. The ones shown in the photo are “250 Ways Of Serving Potatoes” and “250 Delicious Soups”. These were in great shape and I bought 10 different ones for TEN CENTS EACH. Here is a complete list of the titles I got:
“250 Ways Of Serving Potatoes”
“250 Delicious Soups”
“250 Ways to Prepare Meat”
“250 Fish and Seafood Recipes”
“500 Delicious Salads”
“250 Superb Pies and Pastries”
“300 Tasty, Healthful Dairy Dishes”
“500 Delicious Dishes From Leftovers”
“The Candy Book – 250 Recipes”
“2000 Useful Facts About Food”
When I got home, I looked ‘em up on Ebay and found that people buy them regularly for about $2.00 each. Score! I also learned that these booklets were later collected all together in some sort of encyclopedia of cooking.
Anyhow, I’m not selling because I plan to comb through them to look for cheap recipes. Sure, there’s a lot of padding… you can’t lump 500 Salads into a booklet of 50 pages without padding. Also, a lot of archaic stuff. But, I bet there’s some interesting stuff in there. I’m particularly interested in “500 Delicious Dishes From Leftovers”… we shall see about that!
Cheap Eats Score: 6/10
November 17th, 2005 at 5:32 am
i am very interested in the book of 250 ways to serve potatoes. any idea where i could purchase one like that. maybe from my local book store if i knew the publisher. i would be appreciataive of any information to help me find this book. thanks donna
November 17th, 2005 at 8:23 am
Donna – I have heard that they have aggregated a lot or maybe all of the Culinary Arts Institute collection of these types of books into one big cookbook. I haven’t seen this book so I can’t say for sure. If there are rummage sales near you with older items, you may want to take a look there. I think the individual books were printed from 1940s to sometime in the 70s and they’re pretty common. List price on ebay was about $1-3.
January 22nd, 2008 at 2:37 am
I got 1-20 just last week at a local rummage sale for $1.00. copyright 1940. They are great books. At least one special printing is known. The special printing has the cover and most contents similar to the common copies. However, the title page lists Frances Troy Norcross, Home Counselor of the Washington Times-Herald, Creator of “Radio Recipes” instead of Ruth Berolzheimer and the usual publishing information. The special printing was obviously intended to be available locally via the Times-Herald.