Books published in the West comprise 8.8% of the Early American Cookbooks collection. Most of these books were published in the 1890 to 1920 period when book publishing businesses in the west became more established. The majority were published in San Francisco or Los Angeles. Some of the interesting titles include The Times Cook Book, No. 2 : 957 Cooking and Other Recipes by California Women, Brought Out By the 1905 Series of Prize Recipe Contests in the Los Angeles Times, The Neighborhood Cook Book Compiled Under the Auspices of the Portland Section in 1912, Council Of Jewish Women, and Bohemian San Francisco : Its Restaurants and Their Most Famous Recipes, The Elegant Art of Dining by by Clarence E. Edwords (1914).
When books published in the West are compared to the full set of titles in Early American Cookbooks, the over-represented terms show regional place names (Los Angeles, San Francisco, California) as well as foods grown in the region such as Sunkist oranges, walnuts, and raisins. Chili and chile show the influence of the Southwest. The word “phone” shows that the Western set is far more modern than the full set of titles.
This visualization was created by comparing two sets of texts, cookbooks published in the West and the full Early American Cookbooks collection, using the Meandre Dunning Log-likelihood to Tagcloud algorithm in the HathiTrust Research Center Portal.