For Sale: Vintage Cookbooks, Cookbooklets and Grandma's Kitchen Comfort

Bonnie Slotnick has a website, but she discourages her customers from using e-mail. She’d prefer to speak to them directly.

She rarely cooks in the compact kitchen of her circa-1892 New York apartment, yet each day, she is surrounded by nearly four thousand cookbooks.

What might appear to be curious contradictions in an era of web-based businesses and instant search results are quickly dispelled during a visit to Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks at 163 West Tenth Street in New York’s Greenwich Village. The experience is like a journey back in time.

It is a bitterly cold day in Manhattan, but a whimsical early-Valentine’s Day window display of red paper-doily hearts and cookbooks on food and love beckons visitors to enter the town house. Inside the narrow shop, tidy white shelves hold a plethora of cookbooks from floor to ceiling. Sections are neatly labeled according to categories – Regional Cooking, Children’s Cookbooks, Household Manuals, Holidays, Cocktail Guides, or James Beard. There is a smattering of antique kitchen gadgets and utensils and bric-a-brac throughout the shop.

Bonnie Slotnick is a slender, soft-spoken woman. Her words are underscored with fluid, graceful hand movements that convey a sense of gentle elegance. She describes her inventory as vintage cookbooks and ephemera, which is the word typically used for something short-lived and without lasting significance. Yet, she quickly clarifies that the term is really a misnomer in her mind when it comes to her collection.

She spent 16 years in cookbook publishing, and over time, honed her skills as a “book searcher,” someone adept at tracking down rare editions. She opened her New York store on West 10th Street just off of 7th Avenue South in 1997.

I have just finished a leisurely browse through the shop, and carry three treasures to the front desk – a 1928 edition of The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook by Fannie Farmer, a 1969 facsimile edition of Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, and a book from the 1970s titled Recipes from America’s Restored Villages. I ask Bonnie if she recalls her first cookbook.

She removes a fragile pamphlet from a cubby hole at her desk. The red cover has faded over time. The title is Butternut Bread’s Interesting Collection of Good Ideas, a pamphlet from the “Here’s a Good Idea Radio Series.” There is no date on the pamphlet, but it is probably from the late 1950s or early 1960s. The name “Libby” is written in pencil at the top of the cover. It is her mother’s name, and Bonnie wrote it there as a child because it was her mother’s book. Inside is a checklist of household tips organized according to iconic homespun green illustrations. She remembers being captivated by the book, and particularly the illustrations, as a child. When she discovered it again in a drawer as she was preparing to sell her parent’s house, it immediately evoked “the most comforting, wonderful nostalgic things.”

I mention my favorite book from childhood, Betty Crocker’s New Boy’s and Girls Cookbook. “That’s the one with yellow stripes,” she notes immediately.

Bonnie personally tends to gravitate towards 19th century American and English cookbooks of the period 1850 to 1950 – “books without dust jackets.” She points out that as she began to collect, she wasn’t necessarily doing so for the recipes. “I love reading the recipes, but in the period that attracts me, the recipes aren’t all that attractive.” Indeed, she notes that most cookbooks of that period advocated the systematic overcooking of vegetables.

While she does enjoy baking, her attraction to cookbooks amounts to something more. “I’ve always been nostalgic, even when I was very little,” she notes. “They kind of take me away. It seems like a gentler time.” The aura of vintage cookbooks even extends to the language. “The word grand is one I miss. It was used a lot in early food writing.”

While she does stock some volumes by celebrity authors, she is not enamored of the current celebrity chef obsession. “The celebrity chef, I cut off at Julia Child.”

I ask her if she knows the answer to my father’s favorite question – “Why are so many of us are addicted to cookbooks?” She smiles, and talks about how people are drawn to cookbooks for different reasons. One might buy a modern cookbook for a specific recipe, while someone else will buy a vintage cookbook because of the memories they inspire.

What is it that draws her customers to her collection? “They like where the books take them. Maybe an older book takes them back to their grandmother’s kitchen.” In a large, often impersonal city like New York those kinds of associations can be important. “They [vintage cookbooks] represent some kind of comfort and security,” Bonnie responds.

“Cookbooks tell you about the one universal aspect of human beings. They eat.”

Bonnie recommends taking pictures of your cookbooks, especially if you have a large collection. She talks about customers who have lost significant collections in fires, and have then had difficulty reconstructing their collections from memory.

She shows me a lower shelf lined with boxes that are stuffed with food company promotional cookbooks. “My friend calls these cookbooklets,” she laughs. She opens a box that contains dozens, ranging from Chocolate to Cheese. She is quite taken by the evocative illustrations and photography. The small booklets seem to carry a Proust-like ability to conjure up sentimental memories for her.

She pulls out a first edition of Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, priced at $250, and places it on the desk. The gilded lettering on the spine is faded. I feel a sense of awe. I’m almost afraid to touch it. “Go ahead,” she encourages. “That book has been taped together so many times.”

As we conclude our conversation, two women are preparing to leave the shop. They have not made a single purchase, but they are clearly delighted. “It’s just so much fun in here,” one woman enthuses.

Upon hearing the comment, Bonnie gives me a contented smile. That is exactly the reason she collects cookbooks.

©2008 T.W. Barritt All Rights Reserved