Mrs. Welch's Cookbook

Date1884

Dimensions6 × 8 1/2 × 1 in. (15.2 × 21.6 × 2.5 cm)

ClassificationsBooks, Manuscripts, Documents, Personal Symbol & Correspondence

Credit LineDonated by Gertrude Bolton Rosh. In the Farm House Museum Collection, Farm House Museum, University Museums, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa.

Object number74.11.1

Status

Not on view

Collections

Books, Magazines, & Documents

Label TextMary Beaumont Welch, wife of the first president of Iowa State College Adonijah Welch, organized and headed the first Department of Domestic Economy from 1875-1883 at Iowa State. In 1872, Welch began supplementing the practical labor performed by college women in kitchens with lectures on cooking. She taught and gave demonstrations in the president's residence but eventually moved her work to the college kitchen in the basement of the Main Building. By 1875, she convinced the governing board to allocate funds for a fully equipped experimental kitchen and officially established a department of "cookery and household arts," the first of its kind at any American college. Her department focused on natural sciences and their application to domestic economy. She vowed to improve dietary standards and living conditions in Iowa by training college women to be "proper homemakers." Mary Welch is also credited as having initiated the first extension efforts at a land grant institution when she taught classes to women in Des Moines, Iowa. Noting that no textbooks, reference works, or "classified or systematized knowledge" existed for household instruction, Welch undertook a task to organize the fundamental information for the courses. She sought recipes, food histories, and information on market supply and quality. Ultimately “Mrs. Welch's Cookbook,” an 1884 textbook for her students, is a testament to her dedication and innovation at Iowa State.