Vintage Cookbooks: Meta Given's Modern Family Cook Book & The Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking

Another installment in the ongoing vintage cookbook series, we look at Meta Given's Modern Family Cook Book (first published in 1942) and The Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking (first published in 1947). While these books were originally published in the 1940's, they continued to be reprinted through the 1970's with millions of copies in print.

Author Meta Given was born in 1888 on a Missouri farm. She studied nutrition and home economics at the University of Missouri, and University of Wisconsin and did graduate work at the University of Chicago. She had great interest in ways to bring nutritious meals to the table while minimizing costs to consumers.

Given authored a column in the Chicago Tribune in the early 1930's and wrote a syndicated column called "Eat Well on $12 a Week" from 1939 to 1949. She recommended that Americans help themselves each day to ten different categories of food to ensure adequate nutrition: milk, meat (or cheese for those who don't eat meat, green or yellow vegetable, another vegetable, potato (once a week pasta or rice can take the place but increase vegetable consumption), egg, butter, whole grain, citrus fruit or tomato, and another fruit.

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