Vaughan's Vegetable Cook Book: How to Cook and Use Rarer Vegetables and Herbs

An early Twentieth Century publication of New York and Chicago's Vaughan Seed Store, VAUGHAN'S VEGETABLE COOK BOOK: HOW TO COOK AND USE RARER VEGETABLES AND HERBS offers a wide range of delectable recipes drawn from the Chicago Herald-Record Newspaper, popular cook books of the era including "The Cook's Own Book," "The Household" and "Practical Housekeeping," and a variety of traditional French and German sources. This Better Days Books quality reprint edition is taken from the Third Printing of this popular title (1919), and reproduces the original cover in all its plain but timeless charm - including the original price of just 35 cents!

Vaughan, John Charles–Chicago, Illinois–started out selling nursery stock but began selling seeds when his customers started asking for seed. He opened his first store, called Vaughan’s Seed Store, in the ‘loop’ of Chicago in 1876. Later the greenhouse trade started asking for horticultural supplies, and the Vaughan Seed Company expanded their business to include those supplies. Vaughan issued eight different catalogs annually, each one designed for a specific market. Its Corn and Potato Manual of 1882 addressed its customers in academic terms to satisfy a growing public interest in scientific agriculture. It was filled with dissertations on botany, chemistry, and biblical references to plants. The company was later headed by Leonard H. Vaughan and then John C. Vaughan II. In the late 1950s, the company bought the Merion Bluegrass seed market and became one of the dominant figures in the grass seed market. It was during this time that the company expanded outside of Chicago to Bound Brook, New Jersey. With the expansion of the business in the 1960s, the company moved to Downers Grove, Illinois. At that time they discontinued their home garden catalog and concentrated on the commercial market. In 1972, the company bought the Jacklin Seed Co., Inc. of Dishman, Washington. The company then became known as the Vaughan-Jacklin Corp. Many other companies were absorbed into the business in the 1970s. In July 1989, Sandoz Corp. purchased the company, and then Novartis Seeds purchased the Sandoz Corp. Novartis Seeds is now the world’s second largest seed company. The U.S. headquarters remain in Downers Grove, Illinois. Today the company operates in three major areas: horticultural plant products, plastic products, and grass seed production and marketing. (Smithsonian Libraries)