The Enterprising Housekeeper
200 Tested Recipes
By Helen Louise Johnson
Illustrated With Kitchen Helps
Price 25¢
Copyright 1906

Here’s a lovely book I’ve owned for quite awhile now and I actually have two copies of it. One is a 1906 issue and the other is from 1898.

You can click either of the book covers to view a larger image, they’re quite pretty I think :). You’ll notice the later edition is actually half the cost of earlier edition, printing costs must have gotten better over time.

The Enterprising Housekeeper
By Helen Louise Johnson
Published By The Enterprise Manufacturing Company of PA.
Philadelphia, U.S.A.
1898
Price Fifty Cents

This edition printed in 1898 is not the first copy, I believe there was one earlier in 1896.

From the first page in the 1906 edition:

We may live without poetry, music and art,
We may live without conscience and live without heart,
We may live without friends, we may live without books,
But civilized man cannot live without cooks.

These books were distributed by The Enterprise Manufacturing Company of PA as a marketing tool I believe. The books offered real value with all the recipes and kitchen help tips, but they also contained many references and illustrations of kitchen gadgets that were made by the company. Women bought the books because of the tips and recipes, but it was also a shopping catalog that promoted their gadgets–what great marketing!

I’ll be publishing various pages from the book here on RecipeCurio along with scans of those pages. It will be an interesting look back and I’m happy to share this delightful book with you :).

Update: All the pages from this book are filed in this category: The Enterprising Housekeeper. The book’s pages are filed in order so you just need to scan down to find the page you want.