Community cookbooks are an awesome cooking resource. They are easy to overlook as they are often diminutive in size and shabby with wear. But don’t discount their value. They are reliable kitchen friends. It’s a lead pipe cinch that contributors submitted a favorite tested recipe. No one was signing their name to something marginal. You can’t say that about every glossy, professional hardcover cookbook. Who hasn’t made something out of one of those aspirational books that tasted disappointing? Or one that called for curdled yak milk or some other ingredient that is difficult to find and/or expensive. You are more likely to see recipes calling for a can of mushroom soup in a community cookbook than one that calls for dried fermented moth wings.
The fanciness of community cookbooks covers a wide arc. Community cookbooks from august woman’s clubs are high end productions with thick glossy covers and nice paper for the inside. Community cookbooks that were fundraisers for schools and church groups are often produced by cookbook specific printers. These might have section dividers and a heavier laminated stock cover. On the other end of the arc, there are the older typewritten and photocopied community cookbooks. These are precious for the amount of time and care that went into producing them.
Case in point, this edition of A Taste of Georgia by the Newnan Junior Service League is the 1994 fifteenth printing (the original printing was in 1977). Favorite Recipes From Our Best Cooks was published by a company that specialized in fundraising books for the Gethsemane Lutheran Church Women and includes generic but helpful pages like an everyday herb guide and a time table for meat cookery in addition to their recipes. Our Favorite Recipes from The Mothers’ Club of the First Congregational Church in Waterville, Maine (1964) is photocopied and held together with rings.
Church cookbooks are excellent resources for both regional and ethnic recipes. A Greek Orthodox church cookbook is going to have lots of Greek recipes. A Maine cookbook is going to have recipes for baked things and seafood.
They are also great time capsules for what we ate when. Things that were on trend at the time the cookbook was compiled were often submitted. Appetizers and beverages are a prime place to see recipes reflective of the era.
For example, this New England Telephone employees cookbook from 1984, I Wish I Could Cook, has an all time classic punch recipe.
Condition is relative for a community cookbook. One of my strongest beliefs is to always look for the stained pages in any pre-owned cookbook because those are the go-to recipes. I think the same about community cookbooks overall. The splotchier it is, the better the odds that it has some good stuff inside.
This 1971 fourth printing of Atlanta Cooks for Company from the Atlanta Music Club is what would charitably be called a “reading copy” since the cover has been nearly loved right off it. Notations on recipes are always helpful, much like the comments users add to online recipes.
While we online sellers don’t always know who buys our things, but I have heard from a few community cookbook buyers that were elated to find a replacement for a lost family heirloom. Prices for these cookbooks range from $10-$25, probably not much more than they originally sold for.
