These two vintage cookbooks (©1953 and 1961) were a wedding shower (yes I actually had one and wore a bow hat and all- crazy) gift from my dear friend Liz, whose work I have written about before here and here. She had covered the inside of a box with moss and tucked them in for a really fun surprise when opening. I had to look up what a canapés is – according to wikipedia it’s “a small, prepared and usually decorative food, held in the fingers and often eaten in one bite.” The cookbooks have really adorable patterned cover wraps. The interiors are set up alphabetically with a big letter for each header that starts the first word of a short funny rhyming poem about cooking which is surrounded by illustration. The illustrations are really sweet with this black lines and offset flat color. I really like the script hand lettering used for the poems too. All of this decoration by Ruth Mc Crea. I searched around and found a good number of copies of one of them on ebay and learned that these are just two in a large series- there’s ABCs of barbecue, cookies and salads and even casseroles. How fun would it be to have them all! Thanks again Liz!

© Julia Rothman 2007