William L. Clements Library

Culinary Ephemera Guide

Overview

The collection of culinary ephemera at the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive (JBLCA) at the Clements Library includes advertising pamphlets, government publications, and the publications of farmers co-ops and food boards that promote various food products, household appliances, kitchen equipment, and food-related products. The collection contains over 10,000 discrete items dating back to the first half of the 19th century and extends to the middle of the 20th century. Items are grouped by subject, with other similar items. In addition, the JBLCA has a growing collection of thousands of original menus, dating back to the first half of the 19th century. Further information on subject groupings, searching the collection via the University of Michigan’s online catalog Mirlyn, and possible areas of research interest can be found below.

Research Topics of Potential Interest

The ephemera collection of the JBLCA provides a wealth of opportunities for research in the history of the 19th and 20th century United States. While culinary history and changing foodways are documented in abundance, there is potential for using the collection to document larger themes in American cultural, social, and political history. The following brief overview is meant to give researchers a peek into the many topics upon which the collection touches.

Gender, Race and Ethnicity

Many of the items in the culinary ephemera collection can be used to study changes in gender roles, shifting conceptions of the gendered self, and gender in relation to food and housekeeping. The ephemera also contain many items related to the history of race and ethnicity. The ephemera advertising ethnic food products are an excellent place to begin understanding how food marketing represented different ethnic groups, how other Americans viewed these groups, and what was considered “ethnic” food at various points in the 19th and 20th centuries. Race as a category cannot be located in any one box, but representations of African Americans appear in advertisements for many products. The history of race, its relationship to American identity, housekeeping, food production, and consumption, and shifting portrayals of African Americans in advertising would be fruitful areas of study.

Items of interest for research in this category include rice advertisements with titles such as:

Creole Mammy Rice Recipes (undated)
Let the Stars Show You How to Take a Trick a Day with Bisquick (1933)
Betty Crocker’s $25,000 Recipe Set Featuring Recipes From World Famous Chefs for Food that Enchant Men (1935)
Mexican Cookery for American Homes (1923)

War

The collection contains ephemera devoted entirely to war-time culinary ephemera, including World War I and II, and could be used to study how war, rationing, and government propaganda influenced the use of food on the home front.

Researchers interested in war will find many different publications, including:

Don’t Let Butter Rationing Scare You! (undated)
Victory Meal Planner (1942)
Wartime Care and Use of Electric Appliances (1943)
Recipes to Match Your Sugar Ration (1917)
War Gardening and Home Storage of Vegetables (1919)

Economy

There is a wealth of information in the JBLCA related to economic change, in periods of both depression and economic expansion. The ephemera could be used to understand how food consumption, cooking, housekeeping, and technology were affected by the economic climate. This is also an area where the culinary ephemera could help to document broader social and cultural responses to economic change as they relate not only to food, but also to leisure, convenience, thrift, gender, and the history of technology.

Ephemera of interest include government publications and commercial advertisements:

Meat Dishes at Low Cost (1934)
Left Overs or Economy in the Kitchen (1891)
Food Economy: Recipes for Left-overs and Plain Desserts (1920)
55 Ways to Save Eggs (1917)
100 Old Fashioned Cooking Recipes for Cutting Table Expenses One-Half (1910)

Leisure

The history of leisure in America is amply documented in the collection. Researchers will find that the culinary ephemera are a large window into the history of leisure in the United States. The ephemera also provide opportunities for examining the relationship of food and leisure from a historical perspective. Topics might include the emergence of outdoor cooking as a leisure activity, shifts in home entertainment trends, the role of alcohol in leisure and entertaining, and the rise of food preparation and consumption as a leisure activity.

Researchers interested in leisure will find the following titles, and many like them in the collection:

How to Enjoy an Outdoor Cook-Nook (1950)
Home Entertainment Guide to Barbequing (1950)
Carstairs Party Book (1950)
Bottoms Up (1934)
Mixed Drinks and How to Make Them (1929)
Cresca Foreign Luncheons (1910)

Convenience, Domestic Economy/Home Economics, and Housekeeping

While the culinary ephemera focus primarily on edible products, a significant number of boxes deal with kitchen equipment, appliances, tableware, cookware, and general housekeeping, including cleaning, laundry, and sewing. These items are especially useful for studying the history of domestic economy, housekeeping, and the role of convenience in marketing domestic products. They could also be used to examine how improved household technology shaped women's lives and either contributed to or reflected shifting notions of gender roles.

Among the many valuable items in the collection for these topics are titles such as:

Meals Go Modern Electrically (1940)
I'm a Miracle-Worker for Busy Housewives (Clorox advertisement) (1936)
Let an Eclipse Do the Work (vacuum cleaner advertisement) (undated)
Electric Waffle Iron Recipes (1930)
Woman and Her Slave (advertisement for vapor stoves) (1895)
Your Frigidaire: Recipes and Other Helpful Information (1933)
Little Ways to Lighten Housework with Patapar (ca. 1930)

Modernity and the Construction of the Self

While this is a broad topic, the culinary ephemera collection contains a wide variety of items that could address how modern Americans engaged in self-fashioning. Researchers could examine how the role food, housekeeping, gender, and domestic economy shaped constructions of the self, as well as how views of food and household-related topics shifted as Americans began to see themselves in new ways in the late 19th and 20th centuries.

Items of interest to researchers might include:

Silverplate for American Homes: Patterns and Pieces that Meet the Decorative and Practical Needs of Modern Life (1927)
Modern Guide to Home Canning (1945)
Masks for the Beauty Minded (undated)

Children

Several boxes of the collection contain items related specifically to the marketing of food to children and their parents. This part of the collection could be used to study the ways that adults and manufacturers socialized children into particular gender roles, how people thought about the relationship between children’s growth, development, and food, and the marketing of specific food products to children and/or their parents.

Titles of interest in this area include:

A Little Book for a Little Cook (1905)
The Children's Party Book (1924)
Body Building Dishes for Children Cook Book (1945)
Recipes for Toddlers (1948)
The Frolie Grasshopper Circus (1898)
Dainty Desserts for Dainty People (1895)

Health and Wellness

Scattered throughout the collection, and specifically in the Health Foods boxes, are ephemera related to nutritional claims, early patent medicine, home remedies, and weight loss trends. These items help to illuminate how scientific advances in the understanding of nutrition changed people’s eating habits, the history of weight loss and body image, particularly for women, and changing attitudes about health and wellness.

Researchers might find the following titles, and others like them, useful:

Cheno Keep or Regain That Youthful Figure (1932)
The Cook Book for Low Sodium Diet (1950)
What You Can Do About That Tired Feeling (1945)
Drake's American Receipt Book (advertisement for P. H. Drake's plantation bitters) (1867)

Industrial Production of Food

One of the most prominent themes of the collection is the rise of the industrial production of food products and its subsequent marketing by large corporations. Issues of food purity came to the fore in the late 19th century, while the emergence of national advertising campaigns exploded in the early 20th century. The ephemera can be used to understand these trends in greater depth, as well as to examine how mass production of food products, kitchen equipment, and the emergence of packaged, preserved, and processed foods changed Americans’ diets and their relationship with food, cooking, and housekeeping. Many of these trends intersect with the histories of gender, leisure, modernity, and understandings of health and wellness. Researchers might also be interested in ephemera relating to the history of farming and the rise of industrial agriculture.

Among items of interest to researchers are:

Royal Baker and Pastry Cook (1890)
New Recipes for Pillsbury's Cake Flour (ca. 1930)
Calumet Cook Book: Reliable Recipes (1908)
How to Have the Most Fun with Cake Mixes (Betty Crocker) (ca. 1950s)
57 Ways to Use Heinz Condensed Soups (ca. 1930s)

Catalog Records

Items are not cataloged individually in Mirlyn, but are “Collection Cataloged” by box, under the title Culinary Ephemera. Thus, a catalog record in Mirlyn might have the title “[Culinary Ephemera –:Refrigerators] Box 61.” When clicking into a record for a specific box, contributors and date ranges (earliest and latest publication dates) for the items in the box are listed above the more specialized information on “Holdings,” “Description,” and “Subjects.” Within the catalog record, some of the most useful information will be found under the “Description” tab. Subject headings will not, in general, be as useful as the “Description” tab, which contains a full listing of each item in the box, the total number of items in the box, as well as publication information, including date and publisher, for each item.

This view of a basic catalog record provides an example of what you will see when you view the record for a specific box in Mirlyn.

A Note on Mirlyn Classic

The capabilities in Mirlyn Classic are the same as those in the new version of Mirlyn; however, the way the record displays will be slightly different. Instead of having to use tabs to see various parts of the record, the entire record displays on one page. Researchers who prefer to see records in this format should use Mirlyn Classic.

Search Tips

There are several ways to search the culinary ephemera, which apply to both the new Mirlyn and Mirlyn Classic. The first step to take, when searching for culinary ephemera, is to use the advanced search option to limit your search to the William L. Clements Library.

If you want to browse the entire collection of currently cataloged boxes, searching for the title Culinary Ephemera in Mirlyn will return records for each box that has been entered into the catalog. From here a researcher could browse through the titles to find specific subject areas he is interested in. A researcher interested in specific authors can use the author field to bring up notable authors and publishers of the ephemera. However, if a researcher needs to locate a specific title or brand-name she can search under “All Fields,” and Mirlyn will search the descriptive information where individual titles, brands, and publication information is found.

To search for one of the subject areas in the lists of subjects defined by the JBLCA (listed below), add the subject area to the title search. For example, a researcher interested in sugar, honey, and other sweeteners might search for the title Culinary Ephemera Sweetening Products to bring up all of the boxes that would contain ephemera promoting sweeteners.

When using the advanced search option, a researcher can use advanced Boolean searching. For example, someone looking for ephemera on walnuts could search for “culinary ephemera” in the “title” field and “walnuts” in “all fields” to find all boxes where there are ephemera related to walnuts.

Subjects

Flour Products, Baked Goods, and Yeast and Baking Powder Products - Flour products include flour and assorted baked goods such as cookies, crackers, bread and cakes. The boxes specifically marked “Yeast and Baking Powder Products” contain advertisements for baking powder and yeast, but not generally for prepared foods.

Fruits, Vegetables, and Nuts - Boxes labeled “Fruits, Vegetables, and Nuts” contain ephemera on nuts of various types, including peanuts, coconuts, fresh and dried fruits, fruit juices, and canned fruits.

Refrigerators and Freezers - Boxes labeled either “Refrigerators” or “Refrigerators and Freezers” contain ephemera related to various refrigerators models, freezers, ice, ice boxes, and ice cream freezers/makers.

Spices, Extracts, and Salt Products - Boxes labeled “Spices, Extracts, and Salt Products” cover various types of herbs, salt products, flavoring products, spices, and extracts.

Corn Products – Boxes labeled “Corn Products” contain information on any products made from corn, including corn syrup, cereals, corn starch, corn oil, and miscellaneous products.

Condiments - Boxes labeled “Condiments” include ephemera related to ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise and salad dressings, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco/Creole sauce, vinegar, pickles, barbeque sauces, and various other sauces and relishes.

Sweetening Products - Boxes labeled “Sweetening Products” contain ephemera related to various sweeteners including: sugar, honey, molasses, malt products, marshmallows, mapleine, syrup, saccharin, and non-chocolate candy.

Cereal Products - Boxes labeled “Cereal Products” include ephemera related to cereal products produced by large companies such as Quaker, Ralston, Kellogg, Postum, General Mills, and Battle Creek Foods, as well as ephemera related to lesser-known cereal companies.

Pasta, Rice, Grains, Legumes - Boxes labeled “Pasta, Rice, Grains, and Legumes” contain ephemera on pasta, rice, beans, peas, and lentils, as well as oversize rice and corn ephemera.

Ethnic - Boxes labeled “Ethnic” contain ephemera with food products and recipes from Asian, Mexican, Italian, Jewish, and other ethnic cuisines.

Patent Medicine - Boxes labeled “Patent Medicine” contain ephemera for various 19th and early 20th century patent medicines, including Lydia Pinkham, Ransom and Winslow, C. I. Hood & Co., Dr. J. C. Ayers & Co., and veterinary products.

Canning, Canning and Freezing, and Canning and Preserving – Boxed with one of these three labels contain ephemera with canning, freezing, and preserving tips and instructions, advertisements for canning supplies, as well as recipes for jams, jellies, pickles, relishes, and other canned and preserved foods.

Canned Foods - Boxes labeled “Canned Foods” contain advertising ephemera for commercially canned goods.

Stoves - Oil, Wood, Gas, Electric - Boxes labeled “Stoves” are usually further categorized by type (oil, wood, gas, electric), and contain advertisements, recipes, operating instructions, and catalogs for stoves and barbeques.

Gelatin and Tapioca - Boxes labeled “Gelatin and Tapioca” contain items promoting Jell-O, Knox, other gelatins, and various tapioca products.

Margarine, Cooking Oil, Shortening, Lard, and Other Fats – Boxes with these labels contain ephemera of various cooking fats including Crisco, cooking oils, lard, and suet.

Beverages - Non-alcoholic - Boxes labeled “Beverages - Non-alcoholic” contain information related to coffee, tea, soft drinks, and water. Fruit juices fall under “Fruits, Vegetables, and Nuts.” There are also some boxes specifically labeled “Tea” and “Coffee.”

Beverages - Alcoholic - Boxes Labeled “Beverages - Alcoholic” contain ephemera related to beer, wine, cocktails, and spirits.

Dairy - Boxes labeled “Dairy” contain ephemera on milk, milk products such as ice cream, and milk producers and processors.

Meats and Eggs – Boxes labeled “Meats and Eggs” contain ephemera related to meat and egg products, especially processed meats by Armour, Beech-Nut, and Swift, as well as the National Livestock & Meat Board.

Multiple Product Food Companies – Boxes labeled “Multiple Product Food Companies” contain ephemera produced by large corporations that produce multiple products, such as Dole, Heinz, and Campbell’s.

Fish and Seafood – Boxes labeled “Fish and Seafood” contain ephemera promoting frozen and canned fish and seafood by companies such as Star-Kist, Kemp's, and Gorton's, as well as pamphlets produced by fishery cooperatives and state and private marketing associations.

Health Food – Boxes labeled “Health Food” contain ephemera produced by private and non-profit and government organizations. Non-profit items include healthy eating tips from organizations such as the American Cancer Society, U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the American Heart Association. Other items promote the products of health and organic food companies and products such as Muir Glen Organic and Stouffer's Lean Cuisine.

Cocoa and Chocolate - Boxes labeled “Cocoa and Chocolate” contain items promoting ground cocoa, chocolate, chocolate candy, and chocolate and cocoa companies such as Hershey, Ghirardelli, Walter Baker Co., and Droste.

Government Documents – The “Government Documents” boxes contain pamphlets produced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, state extension services, and home economics departments at state universities. These materials are especially useful for further exploration of war-related topics.

Children - Boxes labeled “Children” contain ephemera that were produced with children as the marketing audience. Many of them are children's stories featuring brand-name food products, such as Pillsbury flour, Royal Baking Powder, and Nestle Milk.

Soups and Bouillon - Boxes labeled “Soups and Bouillon” contain ephemera for canned soups and packaged bouillon. Campbell's, Oxo, Lipton, Borden, Heinz, and many smaller companies are represented in these boxes.

War - Boxes labeled “War” contain ephemera on food topics related to World War I and II, including how to cook “by the ration book,” and victory gardens. War time food-related information can also be found in some of the “Government Documents” boxes.

Paper - Boxes labeled “Paper” contain ephemera promoting various food and entertainment-related paper and foil products such as parchment paper, party decorations, baking cups, tin foil, and paper bags.

Hotels – Boxes labeled “Hotels” contain ephemera promoting hotels and resorts. Much of this material is currently not cataloged; the box that is cataloged focuses on the latter half of the 20th century.

Cleaning, Heating, Sewing - Boxes labeled “Cleaning, Heating, Sewing” contain ephemera related to housekeeping, including advertisements for cleaning products, washers, irons, sewing machines, and house cleaning tips.

Radio and Television – Boxes labeled “Radio and Television” contain food-related ephemera promoting radio and television programs and stations, especially housekeeping and cooking-related programs, and Hollywood and Broadway (celebrities).

Newspapers and Magazines – Boxes labeled “Newspapers and Magazines” contain food-related ephemera used to promote various newspapers and magazines, especially housekeeping and cooking-related publications and columns.

Kitchen Planning - Boxes labeled “Kitchen Planning” contain ephemera promoting large equipment, stove and refrigerator sets, and information on kitchen design.

Catalogs - Boxes labeled “Catalogs” contain catalogs for various types of kitchen equipment, cooking and household supplies, and food products.

Retail Solicitation - Boxes labeled “Retail Solicitation” contain ephemera related to department and general stores, promotions, and trading stamps, with one box containing Brides’ Books.

Small Appliances - Boxes labeled “Small Appliances” contain ephemera related to various small household appliances. While some are specifically labeled “electrical and pressure cookers,” others contain ephemera marketing everything from vacuum cleaners to coffee makers and electric knives.

Cookware - Boxes labeled “Cookware” contain ephemera promoting various manufacturers of cookware such as Wear-ever, Pyrex, and Corning.

Companies and Corporations – The three boxes labeled “Companies and Corporations” contain ephemera related to various large household-related companies, such as Avon, Metropolitan Life Insurance, and utility companies.

Major Appliances – Boxes labeled “Major Appliances” contain ephemera related to domestic appliances, including ironers, dishwashers, washers and dryers, televisions, and VCRs.

Tableware – Boxes labeled “Tableware” contain ephemera related to silver, linen, crystal, china, candles, proper place setting, and serving and entertaining tips and instructions.

Not Cataloged– The JBLCA has a variety of culinary ephemera that have not yet been cataloged, and new material is added to the cataloged collection every day. Examples include newsletters, ephemera from food studies conferences, and information compiled by collectors of culinary artifacts. If you are interested in a particular topic or subset of ephemera that is not listed here, or if you are interested in making a donation to the collection, please contact the JBLCA at 734-764-2347.