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Cookbooks, Culinary Arts, Culinary History : Cookbook Collections

Discover campus and community resources for celebrating and examining foodways through cookbooks and other food research and writing.

UW Digital Collections featuring Cookbooks

These digital collections, curated by Barbara Hamel, showcase selections from the cookbook collection that have enduring interest for alumni and scholars.

Carson Gulley Cookbook Collection
Celebrate Carson Gulley, legendary chef with Housing Food Service, and famous for recipes that are still prepared on campus, including fudge-bottom pie.

Playing House:  Homemaking for Children
Discover how young women were educated to assume their future role as homemakers.

Recipe for Victory: Food and Cooking in Wartime
Learn how conserving and stretching food resources during World War I made a significant contribution to the war effort.

Cookbook Collections and Archives of Culinary History (natl. & intl.)

Aprons, Appliances and More! (collections & exhibits)

Cookbook Collection at Steenbock Library

In 1965, Madison resident Mortimer Levitan donated 2615 cookbooks to the libraries in memory of his mother, Dora T. Levitan. 

Generous gifts made by faculty and staff, community members, and the CherkaskyFried, HagquistJolly, Kiser Quint, Lea, Lothe, Schmitz-Hinger, SteenbockWilt and Winner families and, by Rheta McCutchin (Emeritus Director of Housing Food Service, UW-Madison), enrich this collection to more than 5000 titles.

Titles from the collection reflect several themes:

  • culinary history (including hospitality, homemaking)
  • appliance and commercial product cookery
  • United States regional cuisine
  • world cuisine
  • trends in cookery (special diets, ingredients and novelties)

How to Visit...
Find the collection on the first floor of the library within its southwest corner. Look for signage.

How to Browse...
The collection is shelved within stacks by LC (Library of Congress) call numbers. Use our guide to facilitate your browsing of this section. Search the online catalog for precise stacks location.

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