Food Writing

Check out the Gastronomy at OpenBU: Recipe Boxes and Recipe Scrapbooks for digital materials relating to recipes, recipe scrapbooks, and cooking traditions. 

Or, visit BU Gastronomy Cookbook Library Catalog on LibraryThing and see the books available at the Fuller Building to you outside of the BU Libraries system.

• Boston University Recipe Collections
• The Cook Book and Home Economics Collection. (Internet Archive e-books sub-collection) 
• Cookery and Culture Digital Collection, Utah State University
• Corpus of Culinary & Dietetic Texts of Europe from the Middle Ages to 1800 
• Digitized Cookbook, Texas Tech University 
• Digitized Rare Books from the Culinary History Collection, Virginia Tech 
• History of Food & Drink Collection, Rare Books, Virginia Tech
• Szathmáry Recipe Pamphlet Digital Collection, University of Iowa Libraries 
• Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project 
• Recipe for Victory : Food and Cooking in Wartime (University of Wisconsin, Madison) 
• Carson Gulley Cookbook Collection (University of Wisconsin, Madison) 
• Advertising Cookbooks, Duke University 
• Digitized Cookbooks, Iowa Cookbook Collection, Iowa State University
• HathiTrust Food Studies Collection 
• Home Economics Archive (HEARTH), Cornell University
• Core Historical Literature in Agriculture, Cornell University
• Historic Recipe File, Milwaukee Public Library 
• Mexican Cookbook Collection [Digitized], University of Texas at San Antonio 
• Fons Grewe: d'alimentació i gastronomia (Universitat de Barcelona)
• Katherine Golding Bitting Collection: Publications and manuscripts on gastronomy, 15th through 20th centuries
• The Sifter 

• What's on the Menu?: A digitized menu library from the New York Public Library archive.

• 1850s and 1860s Hotel and Restaurant Menus, University of Houston These mid-nineteenth century menus located in the Hospitality Industry Archives at the Hilton College of the University of Houston reveal a treasure trove of historical information. The menus relate not only the regional cuisine of the particular restaurant but also show some of the cultural and social norms of society. The menus are from hotel restaurants, stand-alone restaurants, and steamships.

• City College of San Francisco, Alice Statler Library Menu Collection.

• Culinary Institute of America Menu Collection The Culinary Institute of America’s special collection of over 40,000 historical menus includes menus from CIA restaurants and donations from major menu collectors, including George Lang, Chapman S. Root, Vinnie Oakes, and Roy Andries de Groot. Assembled over decades, the collection illustrates the history of dining in America and abroad, with menus from all of the states and over 80 countries, as well as ships, railroads and airlines.

• Los Angeles Public Library Menu Collection. A database of menus from Los Angeles, other cities, steamships, airlines and banquets. Images of the actual menus are being added. The address and telephone number of the restaurant is given, plus the menu date, cuisine type, meal, and price range.

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• National Restaurant Association Menu Collection, Johnson & Wales University These menus are part of a collection that was donated to Johnson & Wales University Library by the National Restaurant Association. Many of the menus featured were part of their menu design contests in the 1980s and 1990s.

• Menu Collection of the Northwestern University Transportation Library The menu collection comprises over 400 menus from 54 national and international airline carriers, cruise ships, and railroad companies, dating from 1929 to the present, with a particular focus on mid-to-late 20th century air transportation. The menus preserve a glimpse of the golden age of air travel in which fine dining, fine wines, and thoughtful design created a passenger experience of mystique and allure.

• Menus: The Art of Dining, UNLV Libraries, Special Collections 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.

• Menus at the Nobel Banquet The Nobel Banquet is held every year on 10 December to celebrate the years Nobel Laureates. Each Banquet has included a unique menu for the guests. Have a peek of the menus below – from the start in 1901 up until today.

• Menus Collection, University of Washington This collection represents menus, placemats, and other graphic materials from many of the Puget Sound area's most famous restaurants and dining facilities in the years between 1889 and 2003. Restaurants in all styles and classes of trade are represented, from lunch counters to first class gourmet fare. Also included in the collection are travel-related menus from ships, railroads, and airplanes.