For sale is an original vintage HORSFORD’S BAKING POWDER BREAD & PASTRY COOK BOOK. This 48-page booklet measures about 3-1/2″ by 6-1/8″ inches. The booklet is missing its cover and the spine is failing. Still the pages and recipes are all legible and the back cover features a great illustration of a Horsford’s Baking Powder Tin.
Like many items in early America, this substance was first sold as a medicine and then later as a beverage. In the late 1800s, Prof. E. N. Horsford, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, made this concoction as a remedy for dyspepsia, indigestion, headache, mental and physical exhaustion, nervousness, hysteria, night sweats, consumption, and other ailments. According to their advertising: “This Acid Phosphate. . .imparts new energy to the system, giving the feeling and sense of increased intellectual and physical power.” Then during the first half of the 20th century, most of the popular soda fountain drinks included acid phosphate. There were literally hundreds of phosphate style drinks.
The Rumford Company, Providence, Rhode Island, were the makers of Rumford Baking Powder. The Rumford Chemical Works in 1856 began producing and shipping baking powder across the nation and around the world. At the turn of the 19th century, Rumford Chemical included 300 acres of working farms and communities to sustain the factory workers, and the Village of Rumford was called the “kitchen capital of the world.”
