The number of books in the Early American Cookbooks collection which contain the word “vegetarian” in the text increases slowly in the late 19th century and then grows substantially in the years from 1900 to 1920. The vegetarian movement in the United States grew over the same timespan and publishers began producing cookbooks devoted to a purely vegetarian diet. The timeline also reflects the increased number of references to a vegetarian diet not only in books such as How to Cook Vegetables (1891) by the bestselling author Sarah Tyson Rorer, but also in general cookbooks such as Fannie Farmer’s A New Book of Cookery (1917).
![Use of word "vegetarian" over time](https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/wp.nyu.edu/dist/7/4252/files/2016/08/Veg-over-time-line-graph.png)