I did a search on Ebay and see 222 copies for sale, some very old and some more recent, one a 1936 eddition and anothe a 1946.
Ebay is a good source for books. Several years ago, I lost most of my hardcover books in a move and replaced them very eccomomically at Ebay. I got some like new books and even found some local cookbooks books there. Books can ship by USPS at media rates which make it an attractive way to get books.
The other two old cookbooks “Better Homes and Gardens” and “The Joy of cooking” also have similar introductions for each section of the cookbooks as well, but are slightly smaller in size, due mainly to smaller print. My “Joy of Cooking is from 1946 and is 822 pages. It has an index that is 61 pages. In addition to the introductions for each section, it also has substitution tables, helpful hints, a list of items every woman should have in her kitchen including pots and pans etc., a list of items to always have on hand in the pantry, definitions of cooking terms, how to set tables, sample menus, a section on herbs, convaleescent cooking, leftover suggestions, food storage, meal planning, a section on vitamins in foods, a calorie chart, having different types of parties, table settings and much more.
My “Better Homes and Garden” is from 1949. It is a little different than a normal cookbook because it was set up as a three ring binder with dividers followed by instructions and recipes. A person would buy the basic cookbook in the binder and then could add to it. It was set up so you could easily add your own recipes and each month their magazine had additional pages you could cut out and add to your cookbook with additional recipes.
Frequently the magazine recipes were from women who read the magazine. Readers could submit their recipes, Better Homes and Garden would test the recipes several times and then if it passed all their tests it could be published in their magazine. It was considered quite an honor to have one of your recipes featured in Better Homes and Garden on the pages intended for the cookbooks. Because of this even though two cookbooks may have the same copyright date, some copies may have lots more pages than others, depending on how avid a fan a woman was of the magazine, and how many of their own recipes they added to the cookbook.
This cookbook was intended to be an all in one cookbook for the average housewife. There was no need to have an extra recipe file, because all your recipes could just be added to your binder. It was obviously a great marketing tool that encouraged housewives to subscribe to their magazine. Because no two of these cookbooks are alike, it is great fun to look at every copy you run across of this particular cookbook.
I don’t know exactly when cookbooks started to get away from the instructional cooking methods and became just a compilation of recipes, but I know by the time I graduated from high school in the 1970’s most of the cookbooks were simply recipe compilations.
I have found garage sales to be the cheapest source of old cookbooks, and often garage sale finds will have extra recipes tucked inside by a former owner as well. The last old cookbook I picked up was about 5 years ago and I picked up an old Better Homes and Garden cookbook for a friend and paid only 50 cents for it. Garage sales in retirement communities usually have the most and the oldest cookbooks since the older a person is, the greater chance they knew the fundamentals and learned them from an instructional style cookbook and the family cooks.