Iowa's Cookbook Collection Among the Nation's Largest
PHOTOS: JOHN EMIGH
If any Mark Twain buff ever wants the recipe for the Roman Punch he quaffed at an 1896 banquet, the University of Iowa Libraries can help, thanks to one of the world’s first celebrity chefs.
Hungarian-born Louis Szathmáry arrived in America in 1951 with just $1.10 in his pocket. He later presided over Chicago’s famed Bakery Restaurant and appeared as a guest on television programs such as The Oprah Winfrey Show. He also wrote a New York Times bestseller, The Chef ’s Secret Cookbook, and amassed one of the largest collections of food-related artifacts in history. Among these works is the recipe for Twain’s Roman Punch.
Szathmáry’s collection, focused primarily on American and European cooking from the 16th century to the 1960s, began in a room above his Bakery Restaurant. Many of those items now live in the UI Libraries Special Collections and Archives.
The Louis Szathmáry Culinary Collection is a vast repository of more than 17,000 cookbooks, handwritten recipe manuscripts, pamphlets, and even objects such as Devil’d Egg by Allyson Nagel, a sculpture shaped like an egg with horns.
Szathmáry, who died in 1996, began sending portions of his collection to Iowa in the 1980s, due, in part, to his friendship with Barry Greenberg, a former UI executive chef. Szathmáry donated the rest of his memorabilia to a few other American academic institutions.
“Chef Louis once wrote, ‘The collection never rests,’” says Margaret Gamm, the former director of Special Collections and Archives at UI Libraries. “He would have been pleased with its extensive use today—not only by scholars, but also by foodies and people who simply like to cook.”
Explore the Collection
View the Louis Szathmáry Culinary Collection online or in person at UI Special Collections and Archives on the third floor of the Main Library.