“Just think, Elsa – one day our culinary toils will be immortalized in a downloadable PDF.”
Students prepared food in a UW-Stout class in the early 1900s.

Everyone knows that grandma’s food is the best. But what do you do if grandma is gone – eat your own terrible cooking? Heck no! You go online to University of Wisconsin-Stout’s online cookbook and look up your grandmother’s old recipes ... or at least something in the ballpark.

 

Like this, only inside of your computer.

University Archives and Area Research Center at UW-Stout recently posted online the contents of 15 olden days cookbooks from the early years of the university’s domestic science and home economics education programs.  The database includes over 1,100 recipes ranging from 1890 to 1925, all of which are searchable by searchable by name, ingredient or meal course.

Want some Youkshire Pudding? Bam! You got it. Boiled Dressing? Wam! It's yours. Shin of Beef Soup? Ker-plop!! Dinner time.

The project was spearheaded by recently retired as UW-Stout archivist Kevin Thorie.  Thorie sees home economics and cooking as an important aspect of UW-Stout’s history, the University had the largest school of home economics education in the country for many years. Many of the cookbooks were written by some of the first faculty of UW-Stout’s domestic science department and include hand written notes and suggestions.

So whether you’re looking to emulate a recipe from the past or simply want something tasty for dinner, navigate your way over to UW-Stout’s Cookbook Archive and fire up ye olde stove.