Sharon Becker's Tasteful Cookbook Collection - Interview

Sharon Becker recently received her PhD in American literature from Claremont Graduate University. To say the least, Sharon is fond of vintage cookbooks. Recently, we talked about her collection. 

ephemera: When did you become interested in cookbooks?

Becker: I started collecting about 15 years ago. After I graduated from college and before I went on to graduate school, I worked in a used bookstore. One of my jobs at the store was to clean and organize the bookshelves, which was a phenomenal way to while away the work hours! I found myself really enjoying the cookbook section. Customers who came in to buy cookbooks tended to buy the newer ones, so what was left on the shelf were cookbooks from 40s, 50s, and 60s. I’d never seen old cookbooks so I was enthralled by the strange world I was introduced to in their pages. Vintage cookbooks illustrate a way of life that is no longer in existence. I’m speaking, of course, of the kind of clear cut gender roles that most cookbooks espouse, however oblique that espousal might be (mother’s smiling in the kitchen, father’s laboring over the barbecue). In a deep and profound way, that simplistic vision of the world really appealed to me.

I also began to respond to the aesthetics of the cookbooks. Photographs of horrible looking food provide the same kind of enjoyment I get when I look at contemporary art. The food in those photos can be weird and ugly and sometimes deeply unappealing … but I like that feeling of discomfort! Nothing challenges your ideas about what constitutes good food as does a photograph of a molded gelatin salad filled with chunks of mystery meat and Spanish olives.

ephemera: Mmmmm, mystery meat. You may not believer this, Sharon, but I've noticed the same thing about the strange and wonderful photography in vintage cookbooks. Once, I'd encountered a collection of cookbooks from the timeframe you referenced, and the food did look alien...and certainly more interesting, from a laboratory accident, Bizarro World perspective. Did you begin consciously, knowing what you would collect, or did you just one day discover what you were doing?

Becker: I definitely didn’t know what was going on at first. I brought home those initial cookbooks in a kind of guilty fashion tucking them away on a shelf so no one would ask me what I was doing with these old cookbooks. I was really transported to another time when I looked through their pages. I particularly enjoyed the suggested menus: what to serve your family for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Again, I liked the sense of order and perfection that these menus telegraphed to the reader. If you could just serve stewed prunes in the morning and a chocolate cake at night, then you’ll be living a perfect existence!

I quickly became addicted to the hunt. I wanted more books to pour over and moon about and page through. I was hungry for images and in no time, I had shelves full of books instead of a discreet little pile on one shelf. I limit my collection to the 50s, 60s, and early 70s, although I have books from the turn of the twentieth century and up through the early 1980s. By the time you get to the mid 1980s, though, food photography suddenly turns to the real. The food starts to look good and not like alien life forms and that means I lose interest!

ephemera: I couldn't agree more...realistic food pictures are dull, dull, dull. What challenges or obstacles do you encounter in compiling this collection? How do you overcome these challenges?

Becker: The biggest challenge has been limiting myself to not buy everything I see! Actually, some of that is now controlled by the vintage cookbook market itself. I have very limited funds so my buying is done mostly in thrift stores or library bookstores. Thus I’ve stopped buying on a large level and I’m now just adding things here and there as I come across them. The truth is, too, that I have so many cookbooks that I am out of shelving and display space. I also have so many cookbooks that what I see available is often what I already own. Being on Flickr.com has changed my collecting life profoundly. Those urges to buy, buy, buy have been replaced with the joy of sharing my collection with other likeminded collectors. Online your collection can be reborn as an important object of interest. Thus the obstacle of not having enough money to buy everything I want has been overcome by the simple fact that someone out there is as horrified and charmed by an awful looking bowl of California Onion Dip as I am.

ephemera: True. Nothin' scary than a vintage bowl of COD. What are your favorite cookbooks in the collection? Do you have any that are 'show stoppers'?

Becker: This is a tough question because I value so many of my cookbooks but not because they are worth a lot of money or are rare or hard to find. I really enjoy what are called cookbooklets those little pamphlets that frequently came with food products (like Knudsen’s) or with new appliances (everything from blenders to ovens). They provide a quick hit of excitement because they are small and easy to leaf through and can really satisfy a desire to see ridiculous recipes in a concise manner.

As for the hardbound books, I like the Better Homes and Gardens series of cookbooks. They were sold very cheap and were widely available, so beginning collectors can get a jump on their collection by looking for them. They are filled with beautiful color photographs of everything from birthday cakes to pot roasts and they neatly capture our collective fantasy of what 1950s America was supposedly like. I also have a Seventeen Cookbook whose sole purpose seems to be to convince young women that they needed to start training to be housewives immediately. It contains everything I love: housewife fetishism, a focus on teen girls, promoting ideas of perfection, and it is filled with photographs of inadvertently ridiculous looking food.

ephemera: For someone interested in scaring up a mess of cookbooks, what resources do you recommend? 

Becker: I confess that I have never consulted a guide to collected cookbooks or anything else that might provide me with pointed advice about collecting. I am of the school that I am only interested in buying what I love and the price I’m willing to pay for that is pretty low. I am lucky in that I got in at the ground floor of cookbook collecting so it was easy to amass a number of high quality cookbooks and cookbooklets at very affordable prices.

Resources for me have consisted of books that investigate the cultural and historical importance of cookbooks. Manly Meals and Mom’s Home Cooking by Jessamyn Neuhaus is a great read. As are Kitchen Culture in America by Sherrie Inness and Barbara Haber’s From Hardtack to Home Fries.

ephemera: How do you store or display your collection?

Becker: I keep all of my cookbooks out on shelves and nothing is stored away. Everything is also organized by kind of cookbook (types of food or dishes, product specific, or by series like the Family Circle Illustrated Library of Cooking). I really enjoy looking through them from time to time and with my Flickr page, I’m constantly accessing my books in order to scan in pictures to add to my online archive of collectibles. My advice would be to enjoy your books as much as possible. What good is a collection that you can’t touch or take pleasure in?

ephemera: It's been a pleasure talking with you, Sharon. This is a great topic of conversation. I'm so glad we had a chance to profile your collection.