Cookery Archives at the University of Leeds

Reflecting its designated status, the Cookery Collection at the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds, includes many unique or rare documents that have not been digitised but which have significant potential value for international researchers. The collections are:

1. Cookery Printed Books is composed of a range of individual gifts made to the university since 1939. It includes nearly 10,000 printed volumes and over 140 manuscript recipe and household books. Its holdings range from 1487 to the present day. The collection has particular thematic strengths in astronomy, empire, home economics, medicine, confectionery, recipes, menus, and vegetarianism. National traditions, including those of China and Italy among others, are also well represented.

2. Cookery Scrapbooks. The work of a single cook, Ann Sergeant, the extensive cuttings (packaging, recipes, ingredients) and recipes in these scrapbooks offer a distinctive window of the evolution of food production and cooking since World War Two.

3. Michael Bateman Archive. This archive includes scrapbooks, videotape, artwork, and diaries alongside the published writings of Michael Bateman. The collection reflects Bateman’s interest in contemporary food writing as well as in processes of food manufacture, including his 1980s Campaign for Real Bread.

4. Food Standards Committee Papers. Alongside his noted work in establishing the Procter Department of Food Science at the University of Leeds, Professor Alan Ward was chair of the British government’s Food Standards Commitment between 1959 and 1977. These papers include a series of important reports that the committee published in this time among other contextual documents.

Scoping work carried out as a result of this AHRC research network has indicated that at least 17% of the material in the Cookery Collection has been digitised. Approximately 4% of this material has been digitised by the university while the remaining 96% sits on external resources such as the Internet Archive.