Guides: Food Studies: Primary Sources + Special Collections

Digitized Primary Sources

These digitized collections of primary-source materials are available through PennKey authentication or as open-access collections..

General Collections

Food and drink in history
Adam Matthew Digital. Printed and manuscript cookbooks, advertising ephemera, government reports, films, and illustrations, 16th to 21st century, to reveal the evolution of food and drink within everyday life and the public sphere.
Feeding America : the historic American cookbook project
Michigan State University.
"Some of the most important and influential American cookbooks from the late 18th to early 20th century", with 76 titles in page images with transcribed text.
Global commodities : trade, exploration & cultural exchange
Adam Matthew Digital. Manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of global commodities in world history. The database documents trade in 15 commodities, c.1500 to the present, including chocolate, coffee, opium, porcelain, spices, sugar, tea, tobacco, wheat, and wine and spirits.
The making of the modern world
Gale Cengage. Also known as : Goldsmiths'-Kress Library of Economic Literature. Fulltext page-image books and serials, 1450-c.1900, covering economics in the widest sense.
Early English Books Online (EEBO) : books on cookery, cooking, recipes, food, drink, and dining
ProQuest.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online : books on cookery, cooking, recipes, food, drink, and dining
Gale Cengage.
Early Arabic Printed Books from the British Library : books on cooking, food, and beverages
Gale Cengage.

Social Attitudes and Customary Practices

Everyday life & women in America : c.1800-1920
Adam Matthew Digital. Monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes, emphasizing conduct of life and domestic management literature, the daily lives of women and men, and contrasts in regional, urban and rural cultures. From the collections of the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History, Duke University and The New York Public Library.
History of Women
Nineteenth Century Collections Online (Gale Cengage).
Mass observation online
Adam Matthew Digital.
eHRAF World Cultures
Human Relations Area Files (Yale University). Fulltext ethnographies describing more than 360 cultures worldwide, including North American immigrant groups. Ethnographic texts are subject-indexed at the paragraph level using HRAF's Outline of Cultural Materials.
The grand tour, 1550-1915
Adam Matthew Digital.
Travel and Tourist Periodicals: Selections from the British Library
Nineteenth Century Collections Online (Gale Cengage).
Meiji Japan : the Edward Sylvester Morse Collection from the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, 1877-1925.

Culinary Special Collections @ Penn Libraries

The Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts has assembled an outstanding and varied collection of special materials on culinary arts and food studies in general acquired through purchases and generous gifts and donations.

The Culinary Collection
This Franklin Catalog search retrieves records for books and journals held in the Kislak Center's Culinary Collection. Some of these works may be duplicated in Penn Libraries circulating collections.
Chef Fritz Blank Culinary Archive and Library
Thousands of books, manuscripts, periodicals, menus, posters, prints, and related ephemera, as well as personal papers donated by acclaimed Philadelphia chef Fritz Blank (1942-2014). The collection includes cookbooks and cookery-related books, cookery manuscripts and promotional cookery pamphlets, and more than 1,000 mostly spiral-bound community cookbooks, as well as periodicals, magazines, and serialized recipe pamphlets. Chef Blank's papers document his Deux Cheminées restaurant and his culinary research interests.
Chef Fritz Blank Culinary Archive and Library (cataloged books)
This Franklin Catalog search result lists Chef Blank's book collection, consisting of cookbooks and cookery-related books, 17th- to 20th-century. General and ingredient-specific cookbooks, American regional and international cookbooks are included as well as cookbooks for special purposes.
Chef Fritz Blank Victus Populi Collection (Print Coll. 13)
"Food of the People". Chef Blank assembled a remarkable collection of promotional cookery pamphlets. This collection illustrates the growth and importance of prepared foods and cooking appliances from the late 19th through the 20th century. This Kislak finding aid describes the Victus Populi collection.
Esther B. Aresty Collection of Rare Books on the Culinary Arts
An exceptional collection of rare cookbooks and cookery manuscripts donated by cookbook collector and culinary historian Esther B. Aresty (1908-2000). The collection includes cookbooks published from the 15th century through the 20th century and cookery manuscripts from the late 15th century through late 18th century, as well as Mrs. Aresty's papers.
Joanna Banks Collection of African American Cookbooks
Part of the Joanna Banks Collection of African American Books, this component collection holds more than 470 African American cookbooks, 1920s-2010s, assembled by book collector Joanna Banks.
Nick Malgieri Culinary Archive and Library
More than 2,000 cookbooks and culinary books assembled and donated by acclaimed pastry chef, teacher, and culinary author Nick Malgieri.
Nick Malgieri Collection of Community Cookbooks
A small collection of American community cookbooks.
Laurie Burrows Grad Collection
A collection of more than 6,000 cookery books, mostly from the late 20th century, assembled and donated by cookbook author, television chef, and food journalist Laurie Burrows Grad (CW '66).
Manuscript recipe books
The Kislak Centers hold more than 300 individual recipe books in manuscript format. These range from a 15th-century German laxative recipe and Tudor and early modern medicinal and culinary recipe books to 20th-century family recipe collections and a collection of recipes from the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, 1911-1922. This Franklin Catalog search includes manuscripts that have been digitized and are available for viewing online.

Food-related Special Collections @ Penn Libraries

These Kislak Center collections focus on other aspects of food studies, or include a small number of items relevant to food studies and culinary studies.

Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture (PSPA) collection
The PSPA is the oldest agricultural society in the US, founded in 1785 to encourage best practices in scientific farming. The Kislak Center holds the PSPA records and the library of the PSPA,
Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture Records (Ms. Coll. 92)
The PSPA Records, spanning 1785-1982. The earlier portions include correspondence with foreign and American agricultural societies and prominent individuals, as well as queries by farmers with recommendations for farming practices. From the late 19th century onward, the correspondence relates to national agricultural concerns.
Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture Library
This Franklin Catalog search displays the PSPA Library holdings, on deposit with the Kislak Center. The PSPA Library contains books on all aspects of agriculture. The collection continues to grow with support from the PSPA.
Arnold and Deanne Kaplan Collection of Americana (Ms. Coll. 1094)
This collection, primarily consisting of 19th-century American manuscript account books and 18th- and 19th-century ciphering notebooks, includes two 19th-century medical recipe books. The collection also includes 70 photographic cards from Philadelphia's Commercial Museum, c. 1920s, showing food commodities and food processing.
Edgar Fahs Smith Collection in the History of Chemistry
This large special collection also includes materials on food sanitation, preservation, and adulteration; brewing and distillation; agriculture; diet and medicine.
Running Press Records (Ms. Coll. 727)
The institutional records of the Philadelphia based publisher from its establishment in the early 1970s to 2008. The Running Press imprint featured heavily illustrated how-to, self-help, food and wine, photo-essay, and children’s fiction and nonfiction books. The Penn Libraries also holds an unprocessed special collection comprising the print Running Press output to 2008.

Food Studies: Primary Sources + Special Collections

Digitized Primary Sources

General Collections

Social Attitudes and Customary Practices

Food Marketing and Business

Nutrition, Health, and Medicine

Organizations and Aid

Policy and Government

Culinary Special Collections @ Penn Libraries

Food-related Special Collections @ Penn Libraries