Selected Special Collections

Katherine Golden Bitting Collection

Publications and manuscripts on gastronomy, fifteenth through twentieth centuries

Between 1939 and 1944 Dr. Arvill Wayne Bitting presented to the Library of Congress the 4,346-volume gastronomic collection assembled by his wife, Katherine Golden Bitting (1868-1937), food chemist for the Department of Agriculture and the American Canners Association and author of nearly fifty pamphlets and articles on food preservation and related topics. To facilitate her investigations, as the Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress (1940) states, she collected "materials on the sources, preparation, and consumption of foods, their chemistry, batereriology, preservations, etc., from earliest times to the present day." The Bitting Collection containing numerous English and American publications on food preparation from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and a sampling of notable French, German, and Italian works. American regional cooking is well-documented. The treasure of the collection is a mid-fifteenth century Italian manuscript entitled "Libro de arte coquinaria" of Maestro Martino which was a source for the earliest printed cookbook, Platina's De Honesta Voluptate (ca. 1475). Leonard N. Beck discusses the manuscript in his article "Praise Is Due Bartolomeo Platine: A Note on the Librarian Author of the First Cookbook" in QJLC, V.32 July 1975, p. 238-253

Digitized Materials From the John Davis Batchelder Collection

	Lémery, Nicolas, 1645-1715. Le Nouveau Recueil de Curiositez Rares & Nouvelles des Plus Admirables Effets de la Nature & de l’art À Leide: Chez Pierre Vander Aa ..., 1685. Page Turner - PDF (275 MB) - Bibliographic Information
	Beck, Leonard. Two loaf-givers : or a tour through the gastronomic libraries of Katherine Golden Bitting and Elizabeth Robins Pennell. Page Turner - PDF (69.1 MB) Bibliographic Information
	Bitting, Katherine Golden. Gastronomic bibliography. Page Turner - PDF (257 MB) - Bibliographic Information
	Berchoux, J. de (Joseph), 1762-1838. La gastronomie; ou, L’homme des champs à table, pour servir de suite à L’homme des champs, par J. Delille. Page Turner - PDF (55.3 MB) - Bibliographic Information
	Recomendacion y Defensa del Famoso Vino Malagueño Pero Ximen y Modo de Formarlo ... Malaga: ... por Luis de Carreras ..., año 1792. Page Turner - PDF (64 MB) - Bibliographic Information
	Lémery, Nicolas, 1645-1715. Le Nouveau Recueil de Curiositez Rares & Nouvelles des Plus Admirables Effets de la Nature & de l’art À Leide: Chez Pierre Vander Aa ..., 1685. Page Turner - PDF (275 MB) - Bibliographic Information
	Rude, Maxime. Tout-Paris au café. Page Turner - PDF (65 MB) - Bibliographic Information
	Ruscelli, Girolamo, d. ca. 1565. The Secretes of the Reverende Mayster Alexis of Piemount: Conteinyng Many Excelle[n]t Remedies Agaynst Dyuers Diseases, Woundes, and Other Accidentes ..., Londini: [Henry Sutton], anno à virgineo partu 1559, 12 die mens. Nouemb. Page Turner - PDF (162.06) - Bibliographic Information
	Soyer, Alexis, 1809-1858. Soyer's culinary campaign. Being historical reminiscences of the late war. With the plain wit of cookery for military and civil institutions the army, navy, public, etc. etc. By Alexis Soyer ... Page Turner - PDF (244.5 MB) - Bibliographic Information