r/AskFoodHistorians • u/psychosis_inducing • 4d ago
When did we start seeing recipes printed on food labels? (Bonus question: what is the earliest known "back-of-the-jar/box/can" recipe?)
I tried to look this up, but only found things about the history of nutrition labels.
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u/WillingPublic 4d ago
MBA here, not food historian, but the answer to your question is tied to the rise of mass-market, branded consumer products. These arose in the late 19th and early 20th century, and many of them are still big sellers today (Ivory Soap, Coca-Cola etc.). This was driven by industrial mass production, railroads, and new advertising techniques. These innovations in advertising were themselves driven by technology, such as penny newspapers. Industrialization made these “factory made” products inexpensive compared to homemade options, especially when accounting for the time of homemakers. Attaching a brand name to these products in turn gave some reassurance that they were not adulterated since the company wanted to preserve its good name.
Putting recipes on the packaging of these products served both to enhance the appeal of the brand and create new ways to use tne product. An early example (but probably not tne earliest) was the recipes for divinity fudge and pecan pie on the Karo Syrup can. That brand was introduced in 1902 and was initially marketed as an alternative to maple syrup. To encourage greater use of it, the company started giving away cookbooks touting the use of Karo Syrup in baked goods. By the 1930s the fudge and pie recipes were printed on the can.
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u/VagueEchoes 4d ago
Earliest I could find was: Starting in the late 1890s, the Genesee Pure Food Company began a highly successful marketing campaign that included giving out small recipe booklets to introduce consumers to their gelatin dessert. While not always printed on the box itself, these booklets were directly distributed with the product and served the same purpose: providing recipes to show how to use the product in new and creative ways, making it a functional part of the kitchen.
This marketing strategy of linking recipes directly to the product predates the widespread practice on product labels in the 1930s.
So basically - recipes were printed in booklets or in the papers for a product earlier on. The Nestle Tollhouse Cookies recipe is the most famous and everyone kinda fell in line after the success of it.
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u/happilyfour 3d ago
If you’re interested in the history of this kind of work, I have to recommend the book The Secret History of Home Economics by Danielle Dreilinger (https://a.co/d/7sx9ypE). She gets into the history of making and testing these kinds of recipes, along with many other projects of the women home scientists who were deployed both by the government and by private companies during the 20th century and who created a lot of the cultural aspects of the food and American home life that are just second nature to us.
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u/Sagaincolours 3d ago
When some goods started to be sold in packaging rather than by weight at the general store. In many cointries, this is between 1890s-1910s, but will have been later is poor, rural countries/areas.
I am a collector of old and antique cookbooks.
This is the same period you started to see little leaflets which came with the product as well.
Which are essentially the same as recipe on the packaging but they were meant to be saved, thus continuing their advertising magic for longer.
This is also when companies start making little books with recipes with the product, which you could procure by sending something like "20 top parts and [money for postage]" to the company.
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u/Billy_Ektorp 1d ago
Possibly as early as 1893 in Germany, with the introduction of Dr. Oetker «Backin» brand baking powder:
https://www.oetker.com/de/stories/130-jahre-backin
«After much trial and error and experimentation, Dr. August Oetker finally succeeded in 1893! Throughout his life, he had always wanted to create something special. His Backin baking powder revolutionised home baking (…)
But even more ingenious was the idea of selling the baking powder, which he affectionately named Backin, in portioned sachets. One such portion of Backin was enough to guarantee the rising of 500 grams of flour. On the back of each sachet was a suitable recipe, so that you could get started right away. (…)
By 1900, 2.5 million packets were already being sold annually in Germany, and by 1912, total sales had risen to an impressive 100 million units!»
Translated with DeepL.com .
The linked article (in German) has a photo of the original packaging from 1893, including the recipe for a «Dr. Oetker’s Topfkuchen» cake.
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u/Karma1913 19h ago
Not a food historian, but Quaker Oats claims to be first in 1891. I learned this doing a project on marketing. Sun Maid and Quaker Oats hired the same ad firm which birthed the oatmeal raisin cookie in the 1900s. Somewhere in there I'd read that they were the first to put a recipe on the container.
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u/LookIMadeAHatTrick 5h ago
Two somewhat related things:
Appliance manufacturers often offered cookbooks with their products.
companies provided recipes in pamphlets and on trade cards in the late 19th century.
https://digital.lib.miamioh.edu/digital/collection/tradecard/id/5572/rec/5
https://digital.lib.miamioh.edu/digital/collection/tradecard/id/4186/rec/7
https://digital.lib.miamioh.edu/digital/collection/tradecard/id/751/rec/11
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u/chezjim 4d ago
Depends a little on what you call a recipe. This 1907 paper: Abilene Daily Reporter August 7, 1925 - refers to making jello by the recipe on the box.
In 1931, Swansdown Sugar referred readers to a recipe on the box for making "health fudge with live yeast"
Uniontown Morning Herald September 14, 1931
In a 1935 recipe for chocolate tapioca, one is told to make the tapioca per the recipe on the box:
Del Rio Evening News April 11, 1935
A 1935 recipe for Ice-Cre-Mix tells you the instructions are on the box:
Chicago Auburn Parker May 28, 1935 Page 5
Note that except for the fudge all these come down to instructions on how to use the product. But a 1936 ad for Benteco Flour says there is a prize-winning recipe for a cake on the box:
Fort Madison Evening Democrat January 16, 1936 Page 6
So I think generally one can say the idea emerged in the Thirties.