Just about every home of today has at least one cookbook and the majority has many more, some numbering into the hundreds. Collecting cookbooks is a hobby with many who consider reading a cookbook better than reading a novel. From new cookbooks we learn what culinary trends are in vogue. From the old cookbooks we learn about kitchens of the past and how dishes were prepared without electricity, freezers, microwaves, and all the cooking equipment available on the modern market that perhaps helps make cooking easier but maybe not as inventive.

The definition of cookbook reads: "a collection of recipes, instructions and information about the preparation and serving of food." At its best, a cookbook is also a chronicle and treasury of the fine art of cooking, an art whose masterpieces, created to be consumed, would otherwise be lost. But let us not forget the collection of recipes, hand-written, clipped or copied, the ones you find stuffed in boxes or pasted in binders. They ...