The Clark collections hold a number of manuscript cookbooks, most of them compiled in the 17th and 18th centuries.  The item of the week this week, though, is a much more recent work, written around 1915 by Harriet Burlingame Mink (1879-1967). A part of our Montana Collection, the cookbook was donated by UCLA archivist and librarian James V. Mink III in 1979, in honor of William Conway, a former head of the Clark Library. Mink was a UCLA University Archivist, director of the oral history program, and head of the Department of Special Collections, among other accomplishments.

Harriet Mink’s cookbook (MS.1979.002) is written mostly in pencil in her own handwriting, and is organized by type of dish.  Below, for example, are a couple of pages from the section on breads.  As you can see below, there are some newspaper clippings pasted in the notebook, in addition to some other recipes typed on loose sheets of paper, tucked in at the back of the book.

Another section of the cookbook is devoted solely to puddings.

There is also a large section on pickles, jams and preserves.  Below, a recipe for pickled peppers, which Mrs. Mink borrowed from someone with the initials “A.M.B.”  Sharing recipes and recording them in manuscript cookbooks has been a tradition since the earliest days of cookbooks, and one feature that this 20th century cookbook shares with its 17th and 18th century friends also in the Clark collections.

All images above from Harriet Burlingame Mink, Cook Book : Jan. 1915.  MS.1979.002, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.