Collecting Holiday Cookbooks

Whether it’s cutting into a freshly baked ham, smearing sour cream across a crisp latke, or dipping into some candied yams, enjoying a homemade meal during the holidays is a beloved tradition for many.

Crafting these dishes, typically a grand assortment of roasted meats, flavored starches, baked breads, and decadent desserts, often involves a long-held family recipe initially sourced from a cookbook. Tucked away in a drawer and pulled out every year, these cookbooks are often dog-eared, marked by notes from elder relatives, and possibly stained by meals past. These texts offer a tactile experience that scrolling through a recipe online often lacks and serve as record-keepers of a family’s history, culture, and customs.

This sentimentality has also extended to cookbook collectors, who range from an antiquarian book collector specializing in cookbooks to someone simply looking for a copy of their grandmother’s favorite food guide. Pricing for vintage and antique holiday cookbooks is often affordable, going from a few dollars to several hundred, with price variation dependent on the issue date and popularity of the book title. They are typically sold through the second-hand market and are found at both traditional brick-and-mortar bookstores and digital sellers like eBay and AbeBooks. Will the old cookbook your family uses during the holidays be worth a fortune? Likely not, but the recipes that have fed them for years are priceless.

Interested in concocting your own holiday cookbook collection? Here are some classic texts that are on every vintage food enthusiast’s must-read list.

Styled as a lifestyle guide rather than a traditional cookbook, this well-known title provides recipes for conventional British Christmas classics like mince pie, roast goose, and plum pudding. Prices vary depending on the date of the edition. At the time of this article’s print date, an 1869 version was for sale on AbeBooks for over $6,000. Later dated texts on the website go for as low as $10.

As one of the best-selling texts from its era, this iconic cookbook includes recipes that have become staples of American Christmas dinners. Available at an affordable price range of between $10–$50 today, a 1951 issue of the book that Marilyn Monroe owned sold at Christie’s in 1999 for $13,800.

Although not published initially as a holiday cookbook, the drinks from this iconic cocktail recipe book and bartending manual have been made at many holiday parties, including hot spiced rum and the eggnog bowl for New Year’s. Home and professional bartenders can score a more recent edition for a single or double-digit price, while older editions have been sold for triple digits.

Originally written by a team of chefs under the supervision of home economist Janette Kelley, this General Mills-produced cookbook defined mid-century cooking and has inspired multiple editions and spin-offs from the 1950 original. It is especially beloved for its “Say ‘Merry Christmas’ with Cookies” recipes, many of which are still being made today. Depending on your appetite, there are numerous vintage Betty Crocker cookbooks available on the market at low prices. If you seek the first edition of the 1950 text, it could cost you up to a couple of hundred dollars.

This classic by historian Dr. Jessica B. Harris centers around the seven days and virtues of Kwanzaa, with over 50 recipes featuring Black American soul food and African culinary traditions. The first edition of the book is relatively low-priced and can be purchased for between $10 and $40.

In this well-known comprehensive guide, cookbook author and food journalist Marcy Goldman offers traditional and contemporary American and European baking recipes to celebrate Shabbat and the major Jewish holidays. Crowd-pleasing desserts, like chocolate-glazed doughnuts, double fudge chocolate layer cake, and cheese pastries, fill the Chanukkah chapter. Prices for the first edition used are typically not costly ($5–$20), and some never-used examples go for around $76.

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