Topic modeling shows some interesting trends and patterns in the text for the 1450 books in the collection. The ten word clouds in the chart below show different topics or clusters of words that recur across all of the texts. The names of the topics were not generated by the algorithm but rather added as a way to label and interpret the clusters. While it is impossible to draw definitive analytical conclusions, the topics do provide an interesting snapshot of the subject matter.
Early American cookbooks had many common themes, largely because the diet and cookery techniques in the 1800 to 1920 period were far more homogeneous than they are today. Nearly every cook used salt, pepper, and butter as the primary methods of seasoning (topic 1), boiled kettles over a fire for long periods of time (topic 2), prepared meat, most frequently with gravy or sauce (topic 3), made bread (topic 6), cake (topic 9), and various fruit based items such as jelly, lemonade, or ice cream (topic 10). Some topics are more sparse and hard to interpret. Topic 5 possibly represents boiling vegetables and topic 7 seems to be about pickling or similar processes. Topic 4 includes words such as place, time, made, long, heat, air, and dry. The significance is unclear, but the topic may possibly refer to storage of food in cupboards, drying fruit or other related processes. Topic 8 reaches beyond the ingredients and instructions into the how and why of cooking and homemaking. Words such as food, time, good, made, great, people, work, body, give, family, years are commonly present in the forewords and introductions to cookbooks which sought to provide inspiration for readers.
