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I bet you have at least one cookbook in your kitchen. Some people even collect them. Cookbooks make excellent gifts for birthdays and many other occasions. Cookbooks tell us how to prepare our food and are a wonderful source of our history.

One of the oldest surviving cookbooks is written on a clay tablet and dates back to Babylon in 1500 BC.  It contains the instructions for preparing some very elegant meals. The ancient Romans and Greeks loved to serve exquisite meals. Their meals included art forms made out of fruits and vegetables.

Unlike today, cookbooks were once only used by the wealthy.  Servants weren't supposed to know how to read, so the instructions were read to the servant. Cookbooks started appearing in the mid 1700s, in Colonial America. The first cookbook published by a woman was American Cookery by Amelia Simmons in 1796.

Starting in the 18th century, cookbooks were written and produced for the middle class.

Unlike today's cookbooks, yesterday's cookbooks did not give specific cooking directions or ingredients. They used terms like "add a pinch of salt".  Eventually this changed and schools like Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking School started teaching cooking using exact measurements.

Today cookbooks can be purchased in many places and over the Internet.  They have a come a long way!