The Inglenook Cook Book: Choice Recipes. Contributed by Sisters of the Brethren Church, Subscribers and Friends of the Inglenook Magazine. Contributed by..

Elgin, Ill: Brethren Publishing House, 1908. Stated twelfth edition (an exemplar from a print run identified as "Fifty-Second Thousand" based on the first edition). Perpetually in demaind during the first decades of the last century, a church cookbook that heralded the redefinition of community occasioned by the ascendancy of mass print media. "This Cook Book originated," readers learn forthwith, "with the Inglenook Magazine, published at Elgin, Illinois, and is made up of unsolicited recipes, contributed entirely by Sisters of the Brethren, or Dunker, Church." A much admired publication with one thousand attributed recipes sent in by subscribers to the weekly serial (named for the architectural recess adjoining a kitchen fireplace) issued by the Schwarzenau Brethren (or Dunkers, in the United States) between 1900 and 1913, from their publishing house in Elgin. A sampling: Vegetable Oyster Soup (with salsify), Okra Soup, Turkey Fricasee, Dandelion Dressing, Raddish Slaw, Creamed Dried Beef, Scrapple, Rouzer Potpie, six versions of Snitz and Knep, seven versions of Apple Dumplings, Blackberry Flummery, Gooseberry Cobbler, Potato Pie, Cookie Dough Pie, Hickorynut Cake, Canteloupe Pickle, Corncob Molasses, Mulled Buttermilk - and a recipe for Soda Water made with eggwhites, tartaric acid, and essence of wintergreen. ~ From 1901 the Cook Book was compiled annually and distributed to subscribers of the magazine free of charge. By 1911 the accumulation of recipes necessitated a new edition, which found a still larger audience even as the more compact original edition continued to be reissued. The story did not end with the cessation of the magazine, but rather the "cookbook community" it fostered continued to share recipes, until today - under the motto "Live simply, eat well" - Brethren Publishing provides an "Inglenook" site for an online community of cooks who are invited to submit recipes and participate in the testing regime. ~ Includes six handwritten recipes, in one hand, to end papers (front and back) and one manuscript recipe laid in. In publisher's white oilcloth, soiled and cracking, with black-printed titles to front and spine. Interior hinges pulling and some small tears to edges; otherwise very good. [OCLC locates four copies of the 1908 edition; Cook, page 66; edition not in Brown or Cagle].