Dining for Moderns with Menus and Recipes—The Why and When of Wining.

Recipes from the Woman’s Exchange Restaurant in New York City


Recipes and menu suggestions from the Woman’s Exchange Restaurant, founded in New York City in 1919. The restaurant was an outgrowth of the Woman’s Exchange, a charitable group established to sell handcrafted goods made by “gentlewomen in reduced circumstances.”¹ The cookbook includes a wide variety of menus and recipes suitable for luncheon, dinner, “Sunday Supper,” and even has “Hot Weather Suggestions” such as cold soups, egg salad, and cold meat, fowl, and fish. With ads for restaurants and purveyors of fine foods.

When the restaurant closed in early 1980, one patron wistfully recalled: “Thank heavens for the Woman’s Exchange, which served ‘good food’ in ‘attractive surroundings’ to ‘a nice class of people.’”² Here, in this 1940, pre-WWII cookbook, however, “the ladies who lunch” were on the rise. Women of the upper classes had not yet joined the workforce in great numbers. By the 1970s and 1980s that situation would change dramatically.


Description: Dining for Moderns with Menus and Recipes—The Why and When of Wining.

[New York}: The New York Exchange for Woman’s Work (1940). 72pp. Booklet. Illustrated stiff paper covers; metal spiral bound. Ads. Some water staining at tail end in gutter; else very good.

[3727800]

Notes. 1. and 2. Patrons Bemoaning Loss Of Woman’s Exchange - The New York Times (December 28, 1979) accessed online.


Price: $50.00