Negative Space: estimating cookbook dates
- Cookbook publication year estimates I have made
- When I acquire a cookbook without a publication or copyright year, I use the advertisements and contributors to make a stab at the likely year of publication. This page provides those guesses in case it helps you date your own books.
- Using archives to guess cookbook years
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Many cookbooks, especially community cookbooks and often advertising pamphlets, leave off the year. Online newspaper and magazine archives can help to narrow down when the book was published.
- Using ingredients to guess cookbook years
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Community cookbooks often call for brand name products and tools. That can provide a lower bound for what year a book was published, but rarely an upper bound.
- Using search engines to guess cookbook years
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Many cookbooks, especially community cookbooks and often advertising pamphlets, leave off the year. Often, however, there are solid clues in the text that narrow down when the book was published, through simple online searches.
