What is a Community Cookbook
What even is a vintage community cookbook? I get this question a lot, and to be honest before I got completely obsessed with them I couldn’t have told you what they were actually called either.
I could spot them by their spiral binding and kitschy hand drawn artwork, but what exactly is it that makes a community cookbook different from a regular cookbook?
Well, the most important thing is in the name. These recipes aren’t from a celebrity chef or even a professional cook. They are donated by home cooks in the community, sharing their very best family favorites. It’s what makes them so authentic - authentic to the era and authentic to the region.
Recipes they would normally keep locked away, their most treasured family secrets, their oldest heritage traditions and their dearest tasty treats loved most by family and friends.
It’s like a culinary time machine, a glimpse into another era, unspoiled by modern trends and untouched by the polish and presentation required of highly published, professional cuisine.
Clubs, causes, and nonprofit groups would ask their members to donate the recipes and then a member of the community who is artistically gifted would donate their art for the cover and the section design. Then it would all be compiled and usually hand typed up and edited by another member of the community, then printed and bound to resale as a fundraiser for the cause they cared about.
I love the care and labor of love behind these books. It makes each page even more special knowing someone manually bound each book, hand drew the cover with love, and hand typed the recipes with care. It’s as homemade and authentic as it gets.
Later, in the 80s and 90s, community cookbook became such a popular and successful fundraiser, professional publishers would offer their services, collecting the community recipes and editing, printing, and binding the books for them, which was much more cost-effective and efficient, increasing reach and quality of the books without sacrificing the authenticity of the recipes.
Sadly, the practice fell out of general popularity by 2000 with the advent of food, blogs and ease of sharing on social media, but I often wish more local communities would bring the practice back.
It sounds super old-fashioned but there really is something about having things in print that’s just a little bit more special I love those messy flower dusted pages with handwritten notes scribbled all over knowing someone before me appreciated this as much as I do today. It makes me feel an authentic sense of connection to past home cooks, and that feeling is at the heart of why started Spiral Bound Foodie these books are humble in every sense, but that makes me feel more comfortable cooking them, and at the same time honored beyond measure to share the recipes with you. So if you’re at thrift or perusing an estate sale, please don’t pass over these humble little spiral bound cookbooks. They may not be as fancy as the hardback beautiful photographed cookbooks from celebrity chefs, but I think they are absolutely priceless and deserve to be treasured.
It sounds super old fashioned, but there really is something about having things in print that’s just a little bit more special. I love those messy, flower dusted pages with handwritten notes scribbled all over, knowing someone before me appreciated this as much as I do today. It makes me feel an authentic sense of connection to past home cooks, and that feeling is at the heart of why started Spiral Bound Foodie.
These books are humble in every sense, but that makes me feel more comfortable cooking them, and at the same time honored beyond measure to share the recipes with you. So if you’re out thrifting, or perusing an estate sale, please don’t pass over these humble little spiral bound cookbooks. They may not be as fancy as the hardback, beautiful photographed cookbooks from celebrity chefs, but I think they are absolutely priceless and deserve to be treasured.