Old cookbook help needed!

Actually the charming thing about some of these books are the handwritten dedications (sometimes dated) from so and so to so and so.

I have those, too, with the brown covers, also inherited from my mom. Part of the fun I have found in seeking out old cookbooks is finding a handwritten recipe sometimes tucked into the pages. Sort of a cook-to-cook communication across the decades.

TiggyBee, that is the book. I'd guess that it's worth at least a hundred bucks, possibly more, if it's a first and I don't know if they did any additional printings.

A good source for old and out of print cookbooks is Janet Jarvits in Pasadena www.cookbookjj.com Their brick and mortar store is on E. Washington Blvd.

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hmmm...huge pic - trying again

Thank you all for the thoughtful answers! I appreciate them so much! Super excited to have stumbled upon them! @pierino - I also found this along with the two volumes. I'm thinking this is the rare one?
Again, thanks all!

I love to find "roots" cookbooks, from used book dealers and as giveaways at our transfer station. Sometimes I find them hard to cook from because of the cultural shift, but I still value them for (as pierino said), the 'here from there' factor. It's refreshing to see Edna Lewis or Alex Hawkes, for instance, showing a world view that we might think is new. I have a cache of 'hippie' books that range from silly to stodgy to inspired. I have Gourmet Magazines from the era of those books, too, and a bit later, when you can see the cooking world in transition -- in large part, perhaps, responding to a 'crowd source' element that FOOD52 does so well! Hope you enjoy them, and feel inspired to go farther down this path!

Lucky you!

I have a large collection of cookbooks, including the ones you mention. First read through the recipe. Next, make a list of all the ingredients. Then work out the order and timing for making the recipe. We have become quite the culture of "You name it for Dummies". So, basically, just make an outline of what, when and how to execute the recipe and it should be very easy.

Postscript; 1961 was a great year for breakthrough cookbooks so if you are shopping look for that copyright date. Think Julia Child...

In fact I collect old cookbooks because I'm interested in how we got to here from there. Some I inherited from my mother, including first editions of the New York Time Cookbook and the rare Gourmet's Basic French by Louis Diat. Somewhere I found a first of Helen Brown's West Coast Cook Book. Helen Brown was there before Alice Waters by a couple of decades. I do like cooking retro, and eating the things I remember from childhood.

Email Celia @ Omnivore Books w/your photos. I'll bet she'll know! http://www.omnivorebooks.com

Forgot to add they're Gourmet, volumes 1 & 2