Rescuing cookbooks and recipes from generations of family histories

April 23, 1:15 PMSacramento Nutrition ExaminerAnne Hart

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How do you rescue and recover cookbooks, recipes, or nutrition and food memories from mold using conservation techniques? You transport horizontally and store vertically. Store documents and photos in plastic holders, between sheets of waxed paper, or interleave with acid-free paper.

Books are stored spine down. Archive DVDs and CDs in plastic holders and store in plastic crates. To conserve time capsules, according to the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC), in Washington, DC, neutralize that acid-wracked paper. See the Rescuing and Sharing Old Recipes site.

Cookbooks
Here’s how to “mend conditions” and restore family cookbooks and recipes passed from generation to generation. First make a book jacket for the cookbook. 

If it's handwritten, transcribe it on a computer disc and print it out on acid-free paper or vellum. Laminate the handwritten copy to keep it clean and moisture-free.

 Put a title and label on the dust jacket with the name of the diary’s author and any dates, city, state, or country on any handwritten, transcribed, or printed-out cookbook.

Use acid-free paper for the jacket. Family cookbook jackets are works of art. If torn, mend the diary. Apply a protective plastic wrapper to your valuable dust jacket or give diaries dust jackets in good condition.

If you have a diary or cookbook and diary combination that's handwritten, have it bound as well as transcribed and saved on a computer disc with several backup copies. Also save the book on your computer's hard drive. Any text should be printed out on acid-free paper or vellum.

If you're rescuing a cookbook published many years ago with a stained bookjacket or pages, be cautious using bleach, because chlorine fumes will fade the ink and soak through the opposite page to fade that writing. After testing the bleach, if the diary is dingy and dirty, bleach it white on the edges only using diluted bleach that won’t fade old ink. Test the bleach first on similar surfaces, such as a blank page in the book.

Repair old cook books and diaries, and turn them into heirlooms for families and valuable collectibles. The current price for repairing handwritten diaries and books is about $50 and up, per book or bound diary. Better yet, publish diaries as print-on-demand PDF files and print them out as paperback books with covers for families.

Some diaries served as handwritten cookbooks containing recipes created by a particular family cook. For more repair tips on bound diaries-as-cook-books, I recommend the book titled, How to Wrap a Book, Fannie Merit Farmer, Boston Cooking School.

How do you repair an old diary or family recipe book to make it more valuable to heirs? You'll often find a bound diary that's torn in the seams. According to a cookbook repairing lecture (given by Barbara Gelink, during the 1990s, of the Collector's Old Cookbooks Club, San Diego), "to repair a book, you take a bottle of Book Saver Glue (or any other book-repairing or wood glue), and spread the glue along the binder."

Run the glue along the seam and edges. "Use wax paper to keep the glue from getting where it shouldn't. Put a heavy glass bottle on the inside page to hold it down while the glue dries. Use either the finest grade sand paper or nail polish remover to unglue tape, tags, or stains from a glossy cover.

Sit away from heat, light, and sparks. Carefully dampen a terry cloth with nail polish remover, lighter, or cleaning fluid and circle gently until the tag and stain are gone. On a plastic book cover, use the finest grade of sandpaper."

How do you remove adhesive price tags from old cookbooks? Memorabilia such as diaries, genealogy materials, books, photos, ivory, sports trophies, cards, discarded library and school books, or fabrics that end up at estate sales or thrift shops may have adhesive price tags.

To bleach the "discarded book stamp" that libraries and schools often use, or any other rubber stamp mark, price, date, or seals on the pages or edges, use regular bleach, like Clorox. It turns the rubber stamp mark white. The household bleach also turns the edges and pages of the book white as new.

To preserve a valuable, tattered dust jacket with tears along the edges, provide extra firmness. Put a protective plastic wrapper on top of the book jacket cover of a diary, especially if it’s handwritten.

To collect diaries or family photos, look in garage sales, flea markets, and antique shops. Attend auctions and book fairs. Two recommended auction houses for rare cookbooks include Pacific Book Auction Galleries in San Francisco, or Sotheby's, New York. Pacific Book Auction Galleries sometimes puts cookbook collections up for an auction.

Look for old high-school graduation class year books to collect from various high schools or middle schools found in garage and estate sales. Restore them and find out whether there’s an alumni association whose members want that book stored where all can access it, such as in a public or school library offering interstate library loans.

Can the diary, recipe book, or school yearbook be restored and digitized on DVDs with permission from those who copyrighted it? If you’re into keepsake album making with family history photos, diaries, or recipes, look for cookbooks printed by high school parent-teacher associations. Some old ones may be valuable, but even the one put out by the depression era San Diego High School Parent Teacher Association for the class of 1933-34 was only worth $10 a decade ago.

You can start a family history business specializing in restoring diaries, domestic history journals, school yearbooks, and certain types of personal, rare, or cook books. For example, Cornucopia, has old and rare books emphasizing cooking, food literature, domestic history, household management, herbs, kitchen gardens, hotels, restaurants, etiquette, manners, pastimes, amusements, and needlework. 

They search for out-of-print books, and are interested in material from the 19th century through 1940. Also write to: Little Treasures, Woodbury, NY. They may be interested in quotations on old, rare, and unusual materials in fine condition.

You could start a collector’s old diaries and photos club. Marge Rice is a pioneer genealogist who created a hobby of returning heirloom photos to their families of origin. See the related article at ancestry.com. Or digitize photos for the Web. See the instructional site on digitizing photos for the Web.

Some bound handwritten diaries were purchased as blank or lined notebooks. People who collect autographs may also be interested in diaries of authors. Some diaries are combined with old family recipes and also end up as cookbooks.

Are diaries worth as much as rare cookbooks? How much are the thousands of rare cookbooks worth today?

A helpful guide is the Price Guide to Cookbooks & Recipe Leaflets, 1990, by Linda J. Dickinson, published by Collector Books, Paducah, KY. See the Bibliography of American Cookery Books, 1742-1860. It's based on Waldo Lincoln's American Cookery Books 1742-1860, by Eleanor Lowenstein. Over 800 books and pamphlets are listed. Order from Oak Knoll Books & Press, Newcastle, Delaware.

Louis & Clark Booksellers specialize in rare and out-of-print cookery, gastronomy, wine and beverages, baking, restaurants, domestic history, etiquette, and travel books. They're in Madison, WI.  Cook books are much more in demand than diaries, unless the author has celebrity status.

Make copies of your family’s recipes, handwritten cookbooks or diaries. Work with the photocopies when you decipher the writing. Store your old diaries in a dry, cool place. Lining the storage place with plastic that’s sealed will keep out vermin, moisture, and bugs. Without moisture, you can keep out the mildew and mold.

Store duplicates away from originals. Was something placed in a diary on a certain page, such as a dried rose, letter, farmer’s wheat stain, or a special book mark?

What meaning did it have? Look for clues for a time frame. Date the diary. List the date it was begun and when it was ended if you can. List the geographic location of the events in the diary and the writer’s travels.

Of what kind of materials is the diary made? Is it improvised, created at low cost by the author? Or is it fancy and belonging to someone of wealth? What is the layout like? Does it show the education of the writer or anything personal? Was it a farmer’s almanac, captain’s log or sailor’s calendar, personal journal or if recent, a blog?

What was the writing tool, a quill or a pencil? What’s the handwriting like? What century or years? Is it full of details, maps, corsages, and pictures? What is its central message? Do you see patterns or mainly listed facts?

Transcribe the old handwritten cook book of family recipes on a computer disc. Make backup copies. Print out a copy. Read it into a camcorder or on audio tape. It’s now oral history. What historical events influenced the writing of the diary? What’s the social history? What language is it in or dialect?

Are there vital records such as wills or deeds to real estate mentioned in the diary? You’ve now mended, restored, and conserved not only a handwritten cookbook from your family’s history, but also a life story and a pattern on the quilt of humanity. Old family cookbooks can be rescued and shared by placing them in a time capsule. Then give the time capsule(s) as gifts to  family members. See the Antique Trader Collectible Cookbooks Price Guide.