Books published in the Northeast comprise 61% of the Early American Cookbooks collection. Large numbers of cookbooks were published in New York, traditionally the publishing center of the United States, as well as in Boston and Philadelphia. The high percentage in the Northeast also reflects the population distribution in the United States in period from 1800 to 1920. Most commercial publishing was centered in the Northeast in the early 19th century and book publishers became established in other regions as the population shifted westward over time.
Text analysis of books published in the Northeast shows some interesting trends. When the books are compared to the full set of titles in Early American Cookbooks, the over-represented terms show terms more common in early 19th century books. These include early printing styles such as the long “s” which looks like an “f.” In the tag cloud below “fweet” is “sweet’ and “fugar” is “sugar.” There are also old versions of words (divers rather than diverse) and English spellings such as flavour, colour, and centre. The Northeast region is also evident in place names such as Philadelphia and local companies such as Ryzon, a baking powder company based in New York
This visualization was created by comparing two sets of texts, cookbooks published in the Northeast and the full Early American Cookbooks collection, using the Meandre Dunning Log-likelihood to Tagcloud algorithm in the HathiTrust Research Center Portal.
