Food Studies

HEARTH is a core electronic collection of books and journals in Home Economics and related disciplines. Titles published between 1850 and 1950 were selected and ranked by teams of scholars for their great historical importance. The full text of these materials, as well as bibliographies and essays on the wide array of subjects relating to Home Economics, are all freely accessible on this site.

Online exhibit exploring "how home economics at Cornell University, served as a critical bridge from domesticity in the 19th century to modernity in the 20th century"

Online exhibit exploring "the influences and inventions that have shaped American food habits over the past two hundred years."

"[C]ollection of 30,000 historical menus includes menus from CIA restaurants and donations from major menu collectors."

Large collection with wide coverage, including "culinary history, the culinary professions, gastronomy, the history of domestic life and management, and the role of food in history and culture." Manuscript holdings include papers of several important culinary figures

The LAPL has one of the largest culinary collections in the country, with holdings in periodicals, manuscripts and rare books, besides the Central Library's 20,000+ volume cookbook collection.

An online collection of some of the most influential and important American cookbooks from the late 18th to early 20th century.

"contains thousands of food and cookery related publications produced primarily by companies in the United States from the late nineteenth century up to the present. The collection provides a rich resource to study the evolution and history of advertising, food products, individual companies, technology, food preparation, and food production."

"interactive website and online archive about food in the Great Depression" Includes digitized, searchable documents from the U.S. Government's Depression-era America Eats Project, "along with almost two hundred local community cookbooks and thousands of food advertising materials from the 1930s."

The NYPL holds an extensive collection of cookbooks, menus and food-related manuscripts.

"With approximately 45,000 menus dating from the 1840s to the present, The New York Public Library’s restaurant menu collection is one of the largest in the world." This website features digitized images of thousands of these menus and offers volunteers the opportunity to help transcribe menus to make them text-searchable.

"Oregon Hops and Brewing Archives, established in 2013, is the first in the U.S. dedicated to collecting, preserving, and sharing materials that tell the story of Northwest brewing. We focus on materials related the regional hops and barley farming, craft and home brewing, cider, mead, and the OSU research that dates to the 1890s."

"The SFA oral history program documents life stories from the American South."

"SFA films document the lives of foodways practitioners, including cooks, farmers, waiters, and a wide range of other folk."

"Among LaRC's extensive holdings about the Louisiana food and restaurant industries are important collections of Louisiana cookbooks, guidebooks, and publications of Louisiana food processors; publications and reports of food, dining, and agricultural trade organizations; and publications of food and wine clubs."

"one of the largest collections of African American cookbooks in the country. The collection consists of almost five hundred volumes covering the period from 1827, when the first book with recipes by an African American was published, through 2011."

"3,000 labels from Florida in the collection as well as 122 labels from Spain."

Handwritten cookbooks, circa 1600s-1960s, documenting culinary history in America and Europe and how tastes have changed over the years.

Collection of ephemeral advertising material.

"The majority of menus selected for this digital project came from the Bohn-Bettoni Collection, which consists of approximately 2000 restaurant menus dating from 1870-1930."

"UTSA’s Mexican Cookbook Collection includes over 2,000 titles in English and Spanish documenting the variety and history of Mexican cuisine from 1789 to the present, with most books dating from 1940-2000. In addition to broad general coverage, the collection includes concentrations in the areas of regional cooking, healthy and vegetarian recipes, corporate advertising cookbooks, and manuscript recipe books."

"A selection of the materials from this collection have been digitized and are available online, including manuscript cookbooks from the collection. These handwritten recipe books provide an intimate view of domestic life and Mexican culinary culture. Also available online is the extremely rare 1828 cookbook, Arte nuevo de cocina y repostería acomodado al uso mexicano, once owned by Diana Kennedy."

The History of Food & Drink collecting area has more than 5,000 books and publications, as well as more than 100 manuscript collections.