The author, Debbie Berne, died late last year after completing this book.

Though Debbie was indeed a fan, this term doesn’t properly capture the depth of her obsession with cookbooks. That obsession sprang not from a love of cooking (her husband, Dave, did all the cooking in their family), but from an absolute fascination with design, culture, history, and the ways they intersect in cookbooks. Her observations are smart, funny, and uniquely her own, and convey the sensitivity of someone who spent twenty-five years designing books.

When a cookbook naturally opens at a given page, we know that this recipe is a family classic. 

Hurray! I just noticed the recipe on the cover. I remember being precious with cookbooks early on, but the ones I have come to treasure have been handled, dogeared, grease smudged, taped up. I like to smell the pages. I was so excited to discover this.

I collect cookbooks, mostly antiques, mostly French.  I've got about 200 currently. My oldest book is from 1860 and written by a contemporary of Antoine Careme. I'm about to blow 4 figures on one book from 1903 by Escoffier this weekend, but in my defense it's THE one book I've wanted for 10 years and worth every penny in my mind. I don't really collect mass market books but I do have some from the early to mid-20th century that are amazing windows into the priorities of the time and what was expected of a woman, because let's face it, at the time cooking was a woman's domain. A few have components of how to keep a home. Any books I have that could possibly be targeted to men are the textbooks for professional cooks. As someone else pointed out, finding the evidence of someone's cooking in the gutter or splashed on the pages is a plus for me. It tells me there's a history that is worth noting here. Pristine condition books are nice, but give me a page of cake recipes with sugar and egg stains on the page and I'll see a story worth telling. 

I read a comment on a Cup of Jo once about a woman who had to jump in and take care of a family in an emergency. She didn’t know anything about their preferences so she cooked the meals that were the most stained in the family cookbooks, knowing those were the most frequently made. Genius.