Start your research on Cookbooks and Food Publications with this guide.

The Schlesinger Library's culinary collections span over 400 years, from volumes by the first female cookbook author writing in English to contemporary releases by celebrity chefs. The Library holds particularly strong collections of community cookbooks, culinary pamphlets created by brands and companies to promote their products, food periodicals, and works on American regional cooking. In total, there are more than 40,000 items in the Schlesinger's collection related to food and cooking, and we are always adding more.

The information on these pages is intended as an introduction to these extensive collections; this is not an exhaustive list of all the culinary materials held by the Schlesinger. Use the menu on the left to view featured samples of our culinary collections as well as tips for finding culinary resources at the Schlesinger.

Related Materials

• For a list of Schlesinger manuscript collections containing the papers of women involved in food and cooking, see our guide to Chefs & Food Writers.
• To explore other elements of homemaking and domestic life, see our guide to Domestic Labor & Home Economics.
• There is also an in-depth guide to the Library's extensive Julia Child collections.
• For more information about the history of the Library's culinary collections and the curators and donors who shaped it, see this 2019 feature from the Harvard Crimson, "The Alimentary Rules of Building a Cookbook Collection."
• Cookbooks to Treasure: Culinary Rarities from the Schlesinger Library, an exhibition of some of the notable items from Schlesinger's historic cookbook collection, was on display at the Library from December 2015 to February 2016. More details about that exhibit can be found on the Cookbooks to Treasure exhibit guide.
• For a list of online culinary and food history resources, see our guide to Databases & E-Resources (some online sources are only available to users with a Harvard ID and PIN; researchers who are not Harvard affiliates are welcome to visit the Schlesinger in person to use these resources on our public computers).
• The Library has a significant collection of audiovisual materials related to food and cooking, including television shows, films, radio recordings, and more from figures such as Zarela Martinez, Lidia Bastianich, Grace Zia Chu, Dione Lucas, and Martha Rose Shulman. Julia Child's collection also includes a significant amount material in the Julia Child Audio Collection (Call number T-139) and Julia Child Videotape Collection (Call number Vt-23). Providing access to A/V material can sometimes require additional time due to formats and viewing restrictions. If you're interested in A/V materials at the Schlesinger, consider getting in touch with our Research Services team through the Ask a Schlesinger Librarian form in order to facilitate this process.

Please Note

Many of our collections are stored offsite and/or have access restrictions. Be sure to contact us in advance of your visit.

There is no single search term you can use to pull up all of the food- and cooking-related materials at the Schlesinger at once, but there are a few useful searches you can use to browse the collections.

One key way to search is by using form/genre keywords:

Cookbooks

Community cookbooks

Recipes

The subject terms that you use are also important. Materials are described by catalogers using controlled vocabularies, i.e. a set of specific, standardized terms. The language of the subject headings might be slightly different from the way you'd normally describe a topic. Finding the controlled term that connects to your topic can help ensure that you pull up as many relevant resources as possible. Subject headings to search in a culinary history/food studies context might include names of ingredients (berries, cinnamon, goat meat, rice flour); pieces of equipment (clay pot cooking, microwave cooking, smart cookers); types of dishes (bibimbap, fruit salads, matzo balls, strudel), or diet (egg-free diet, macrobiotic diet, vegan cooking). You can also try the term Cooking combined with the country or area that you're interested in, i.e. Cooking, Barbadian; Cooking, French-Canadian; or Cooking, Nepali.

Looking for secondary sources like reference material, critical scholarship, or food history studies? Here are some search terms that might be useful:

Cooking--History

Cooking--Social aspects

Food--History

Food--Social aspects

Food consumption

Food habits--History

Food habits--Social aspects

Food industry and trade--History

Food supply--History

Nutrition--Social aspects

When you find the materials that you want to use, check out our guide to Requesting Materials from Schlesinger Library for all the information you'll need about creating a HOLLIS Special Request account, submitting requests, and planning a visit.