Tag: Midwestern

Midwestern

Cookbooks published in Midwestern states
Cookbooks published in Midwestern states

Important Midwestern cookbooks include Buckeye Cookery, And Practical Housekeeping: Compiled From Original Recipes by Estelle Woods Wilcox (1877), Fullständigaste Svensk-Amerikansk Kokbok = Swedish English Cookbook (1897), Science in the kitchen by E.E. Kellogg (1892), and The Settlement Cook Book by Mrs. Simon Kander (1915 edition)

Books published in the Midwest comprise 24% of the Early American Cookbooks collection. When the books are compared to the full set of titles in Early American Cookbooks, the over-represented terms show several baking terms plus the name brand Crisco. Crisco was introduced in 1911 by Proctor and Gamble and promoted through cookbooks such as The Story of Crisco (1914). Other terms include the names of new types of foods introduced by the early vegetarian and health food movements such as protose (a peanut based protein food marketed by John Harvey Kellog) and graham (a whole grain flour biscuit introduced by Sylvester Graham). 

Midwestern over-represented terms (Meandre Dunning Log Likelihood to Tagcloud Algorithm)

Midwestern over-represented terms (Meandre Dunning Log Likelihood to Tagcloud Algorithm)

This visualization was created by comparing two sets of texts,  cookbooks published in the Midwest and the full Early American Cookbooks collection, using the Meandre Dunning Log-likelihood to Tagcloud algorithm in the HathiTrust Research Center Portal.

Regional cookbooks

This map shows the number of books published per state for the full collection of 1450 cookbooks. New York has the greatest number of books published, followed by Massachusetts, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and California. These numbers align with the growth of the book publishing industry in the United States. New York City, traditionally the publishing center of the United States, published the greatest number over time, followed by other publishing centers in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. The trend in the numbers also shows the history of westward expansion from 1800 to 1920, with the greatest total numbers in the East and much lower numbers in the West.

Dividing the collection into United States census regions shows that 61.1% of the titles were published in the Northeastern region, 24% were published in the Midwest, 8.8% in the West, and 6.1% in the Southeast. 

The map was created by downloading the MARCXML catalog records for the collection from the HathiTrust Research Center. The records were converted using MarcEdit and then sorted and cleaned using OpenRefine. The records were then loaded into Tableau to create latitude and longitude data from state names and to make a filled map displaying the number of records per state.