Special Collections.
University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries.
UTSA Special Collections’ Mexican Cookbook Collection serves as a resource for studying Mexican cooking and its many regional variations, and includes recipes published in Mexico and abroad. There are also works that document representations of Mexican cooking to audiences in Mexico and the United States. The bulk of the collection consists of 20th century cookbooks in Spanish, but there are also substantial holdings in English.
This collection is accessible through the library’s catalog (see web address above). Reference services are available in person and via telephone and email. Materials do not circulate, but we provide some photocopying or scanning, depending on the condition of materials.
The Mexican Cookbook Collection is comprised of more than 1,100 publications: 18th century (1 work); 19th century (20+ works); 20th century (850+ works); 21st century (450+ works). The collection includes concentrations in the areas of regional cooking, healthy and vegetarian recipes, corporate advertising cookbooks, and manuscript recipe books. A large portion of the collection came to UTSA as a donation from San Antonio resident Laurie Gruenbeck.
Some digitized manuscript recipe books are available online through the UTSA Digital Collections: http://digital.utsa.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/p15125coll10.
UTSA Special Collections also holds manuscript collections of interest to culinary history scholars, including the Gebhardt Mexican Foods Company Records (1896-1988) and the Richter’s Bakery Collection (1885-1926, 1980). Brief descriptions of manuscript collections are in the catalog; finding aids are available through Texas Archival Resources Online: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro.