Introduction

The field of food and cookery has always held a strong interest for The New York Public Library. The retrospective collection on gastronomy and the history of foods is unusually extensive, and the cookbook collection alone numbers well over 16,000 volumes. From the beginning, the Library has sought out culinary materials from all regions of the country, and from all parts of the world, in all the languages in which it collects. Some highlights of the collections are described in an article in Biblion, The New York Public Library's journal, in the issue of Fall 1993 (vol. 2, no. 1).

The general collections are complemented by the Helen Hay Whitney collection of mostly English-language cookbooks and manuscripts, from the 15th to the 19th century, in the Rare Books Division and the Manuscripts and Archives Division; and the Buttolph collection of over 20,000 historical menus, from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, in the General Research Division.

Historically, curatorial responsibility for culinary materials has shifted back and forth between the humanities and the sciences at The New York Public Library. The General Research Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library now holds materials on the historical, anthropological, social, and cultural aspects of food, beverages, and cooking. Materials on the technological, commercial, and biochemical aspects of those subjects will be found at the Science, Industry and Business Library.

Just as food and drink touch all aspects of human culture, these subjects are represented in all parts of the Library, including the Schomburg Center for the Study of Black Culture and even the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. There are substantial holdings in the Dorot Jewish Division, the Asian and Middle Eastern Division, and the Slavic and Baltic Division, as well as in special collections such as the Rare Books Division and the Manuscripts and Archives Division, the Arents Collection, and the Spencer Collection. Many of these are included in the general catalogs, but some will be found only in specific divisional catalogs. Most English-language culinary texts, from the 15th to the 19th century, are available in microform (see Research Guide: English and Early American Imprints). Many historical texts have also been issued in facsimile editions.

A selection of basic materials is available in the General Research Division's Reading Room. Some of these are listed in the following pages. Those whose titles are self-explanatory are generally not annotated.