Did you know that the Westfield Athenaeum has a collection of cookbooks in our archives? Our collection includes cookbooks that were donated to the Athenaeum and that range in age from Victorian to vintage, dating from the 1880s to the 1990s. These cookbooks represent the wide variety of culinary traditions and communities found in Westfield, from Lithuanian, Armenian, and Polish food, to social organizations and church congregations.
As you can see from the covers featured below, these cookbooks reflect the pulse of culinary popularity for their times. For example, fricasseed eels and bird’s nest pudding were all the rage in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Westfield (see the recipes from The Golden Chapter Cook Book, 1907, courtesy of Mrs. E. Humpreville, and the Second Edition Woronoco Women’s Wisdom, 1884, courtesy of E. Maria Dow).
What’s truly impressive about these delicious reads are the ingenuity and community spirit with which Westfield cooks have and continue to create unique dishes. What’s my favorite locally-inspired dish? Definitely the very New-England Crab Apple Catsup (check out the recipe below). For more Westfield-born dishes, don’t forget to check out our new community cookbook, Whipping It Up In Westfield (part of our At the Table, In the Garden food-based programming), coming very soon!
Crap Apple Catsup (from the Priscilla Cookbook):
Three pounds of pulp, one pound sugar, one quart vinegar, one tea-spoon pepper, different spices. Boil fifteen minutes. (Mrs. F.P.S.)
Happy cooking!
–Kim L. Pereira, Local History Librarian
