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

A Birthday Bite of the Big Apple

Monday, January 21, 2008

Today, I am another year older. The birthdays seem to come faster now.

There are certain inevitable truths about my birthday. Sometimes it falls on a holiday, and everyone gets the day off. Hurray! If it doesn’t fall on a holiday, I take the day off anyway and dream up an adventure just for me. Either way I win.

Other birthday truths – it is certainly going to be cold, as anyone born is January is forced to reconcile. You rarely celebrate with a backyard barbecue. If the sky is clear, the moon is usually nearly full, something I have always considered a celestial celebration of me. Finally, my birthday celebration, whether it lasts one day or a week, will most certainly involve food.

A prior plan to fly south for the long holiday weekend has been scuttled by a pesky sinus infection, but I am nothing if not resilient, especially at my age. So I cook up an alternative escapade – an epicurean expedition through various neighborhoods of Manhattan – a chef’s tasting menu of the best that New York has to offer.

I am bundled tight as I trot along East 86th Street towards 5th Avenue. Central Park is visible just ahead. I turn into Café Sabarsky at 1048 Fifth Avenue. It is part of the Neue Galerie which contains 20th Century German and Viennese art.

The café is in the style of a Viennese coffee establishment. I slide into a booth with a white marble table and a red and gold velvet upholstered banquette. I order espresso with hot milk and foam, or Wiener Melange. The steaming, caramel-colored drink is delivered on a silver tray.

My breakfast entrée is Klimttorte, a traditional chocolate and hazelnut confection (pictured above). The cake – a Viennese Waltz of delicate chocolate and nutty layers – is finished with a regal accent of gold leaf.

Several hours are spent at the Metropolitan Museum of Art viewing everything from Van Gogh’s “Wheatfield with Cypresses,” the new Galleries for Oceanic Art, and a jewel-box-of-an-exhibit of timepieces called the “Art of Time” which is a slightly sobering experience on one’s birthday.

As the afternoon marches on, I head downtown to Greenwich Village. The guide books tell me that Greenwich Village was once a “country village.” The maze of narrow streets mimics the boundaries of small farms and streams of centuries ago.

McNulty’s Tea and Coffee is at 109 Christopher Street. The shop opened in 1895. At that time, the location was just about on the banks of the Hudson River. Tea and coffee were unloaded at the docks and sold at McNulty’s. Inside, there is an ancient tin ceiling and rustic bins of coffee and tea. I am torn between several options, and inquire about the difference between Delmonico, Turkish and Viennese-style coffees. The man behind the counter explains that the coffees are listed from mild to strong, with Viennese being the most robust. He tells me that McNulty’s once supplied coffee to the famous New York restaurant Delmonico’s, hence the name of the coffee at the top of the list. That’s enough to convince me to buy a pound of the coffee.

On 163 West Tenth Street, I enter Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks. Bonnie is a dealer in vintage cookbooks, and her warm and comfortably-decorated narrow shop is stocked from floor to ceiling with every conceivable cookery book, the collection numbering nearly four thousand. Specialties include cookbooks on American regional cooking, children’s cookbooks and housekeeping manuals. I locate a facsimile of Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, and an early edition of the Boston Cooking School Cookbook by Fannie Farmer. Bonnie and I have a long chat about cookbooks and the people who love them, which will be the subject of an upcoming post.

The sun is starting to set as I approach Murray’s Cheese at 257 Bleecker Street. In fact, the store is bathed is a golden haze. But, maybe that’s the warmth radiating from within. Murray’s has operated at several locations in Greenwich Village since 1940, and was originally opened by Murray Greenberg, an Eastern European immigrant who operated a wholesale butter and egg shop. The current owner, Rob Kaufelt bought the shop in 1991. There is a long glass display counter generously stocked with wheels of cheese from upstate and across the world. I don’t know where to begin.

Jonathan, an affable staff member wearing a red ball cap and wire rimmed glasses, asks me if I’d like a sample – “Just pick anything,” he advises. Jonathan takes me on a vigorous run up and down the cheese case sampling exquisite slivers of cheese that warm me to the bone. When we are done, he has introduced me to Goat Tomme from Twig Farm in Middlebury, Vermont (described as “fudgy”), Meadow Creek Grayson, a washed rind cheese made from raw Jersey cow milk, Gres Des Vosses, a cousin of Munster with a “barnyard aroma” and a creamy and potent Cashel Blue from Ireland. Jonathan wraps each of my prizes in gold and white Murray’s paper, and places them in a small wooden box that I take to the checkout counter.

It is dark and frigid when I arrive at the restaurant Blue Hill at 75 Washington Place. Supper is spent dining at the bar, where Rocky the bartender is the master of ceremonies, entertaining a group of Monday night regulars.

Rocky is a powerfully-built gentleman with a welcoming smile who bears a resemblance to the actor Lou Gossett Jr. in his prime. Blue Hill is Chef Dan Barber’s restaurant, set in a Greenwich Village townhouse, where the meat and organic vegetables are shipped in daily from Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, New York. Chef Barber is one of New York’s leading proponents of the locally-grown movement.

Inside Blue Hill it is toasty. Rocky’s cohorts around the bar include Tamara, an opera singer, wine purveyor and ringleader of a weekend supper club, and Warren and Ally, a young couple from the neighborhood.

My appetizer is This Morning’s Farm Egg, Foraged Mushrooms, and Stone Barns Greens, Lettuce and Herb Broth, served with a spicy Pinot Noir from Ayers Vineyard in Willamette Valley, Oregon. The fresh poached egg nearly melts over the haystack of warm greens and broth. My entrée is Stone Barns Berkshire Pork. A waiter brings the hot plate to the bar and says, “You are the proud owner of this beautiful pork chop.” It is indeed gorgeous – a glistening chop with a Frenched bone, sitting atop a dark, glossy reduction of cranberries and root vegetables.

In between, Rocky serves up his homemade version of an apple martini, a powerful concoction that suggests liquid apple pie in a cocktail glass.

Rocky doesn’t quite approve of my choice of Apple Cobbler for dessert, and instead recommends the Chocolate Bread Pudding with Chocolate Sauce and Vanilla Ice Cream. Warren heartily endorses the idea. “If you don’t like it, I’ll finish it,” he offers.

He doesn’t have to.

After dinner, I make one more stop, even thought the night temperature has dropped considerably. I walk briskly to Magnolia Bakery on 401 Bleecker Street, home of some of the best-loved cupcakes in New York. Veronica has recently reminded me how we had wandered aimlessly last summer in search of the shop. This time I’m taking no chances and I’ve brought a map. Standing outside on the street, I nearly talk myself out of a purchase. After all, that bread pudding that Rocky insisted I eat was pretty filling. But then, those red velvet cupcakes in the window call to me. “It’s your birthday, T.W.,” they chant. “You must have cupcakes!”

I squeeze my way into the tiny shop, take a piece of wax paper and select four cupcakes which I place in a white cardboard box. The young man at the counter barely looks up, but slaps cellophane tape on the box to keep the lid secure, and takes my money.

Nothing frothy or saccharine. Just cupcakes to go.

I take the cupcakes home, and they are a fitting culmination to the day.

If there is any insight to my birthday story, it is this – all over New York, and in every town, there are people just waiting for you so they can share the best that life has to offer. Take them up on it. You won’t be sorry. It will taste good!

©2008 T.W. Barritt All Rights Reserved