The Oldest Vegetarian/Vegan/Plant-Based/Whole Foods Cookbooks

Add these to your cookbook shelf

Oct 28, 2025

As I was paging through a cookbook this weekend, I suddenly thought: When was the first vegetarian/vegan cookbook published? And I fell down a rabbit hole trying to find the answer.

Let’s start with the Oldest Western Cookbook …

Food has been around as long as humans - only obvious. But at some point, we began recording ideas for preparing meals instead of just throwing meat on a fire or plucking berries from a bush.

The first Western cookbook was written in 830 in Fulda, Germany, and includes recipes dating back to the 4th century.

What’s fascinating about this is that they didn’t write a recipe with measurements; they just listed the ingredients used to cook the meal. It was up to the reader to determine how much of each ingredient to add to whatever they were cooking. (If you could read it at all.)

This cookbook did use meat. In fact, it used anything within reach - peacocks and flamingos?

Peacocks and flamingos aside, I LOVE books AND cooking. What could be better than that?

My father-in-law collected old books. In retirement, he bought and sold them frequently, diving deep into American history.

I have several, and have always found them intriguing. Touching something from the past. Connecting it to today. Impacting our future views.

Why not do that with cookbooks too? I have several old cookbooks on my shelf. A gift from my grandma when I turned 18. My mom’s old The Joy of Cooking.

But why not dive deeper than that?

Following the vegetarian and vegan trail …

Dr Russel Thacher Trall was big on promoting vegetarian eating. He helped create the first American Vegetarian Society in New York, and published many books promoting a diet exclusively of plant foods and water. He started with Hydropathic Encyclopedia and New Hydropathic Cookbook, which contained recipes using dairy and eggs. Eventually, he removed all references to milk, sugar, salt, yeast, acids, alkalies, grease, or condiments in his book The Hygeian Home Cookbook, published in 1874. You can see a digital copy of it here.

Mrs Richter’s Cook-Less Book is another interesting find. Vera Richter and her husband, John, opened a raw vegan restaurant in LA sometime after 1918. John’s father became a physician and pharmacist, inspiring his son to later study the sanitarium-style healthcare pioneered by John Kellogg. He focused on treating patients with natural cures, and opened up “Eutrophion” in LA, which is Greek for “good nourishment.”

Asenath Hatch was born in Vermont in 1792, one of the first settlers in America. She was trained as a teacher and worked until marrying Norman Nicholson in 1825. They adopted the vegetarian and coffee-free regimen promoted by Sylvester Graham, and wrote the first book, Nature’s Own Book, in 1835. They opened a boarding house and served exclusively vegetarian meals. Asenath was widowed in 1841, and travelled to Ireland to do her part in the Great Famine, bringing attention to the lack of food and good nutrition. She penned Kitchen Philosophy for Vegetarians in 1849.

Edward Guyles Fulton was born in Canada in 1867, and operated vegetarian restaurants in several cities. He also managed several Seventh-Day Adventist hospitals and sanitariums, which is how he came to learn more about sanitarium health. His book, Vegetarian Cookbooks: Substitutes for Flesh Foods, was published in 1904.

“However much we may have become accustomed to it, we cannot suppose ill-health to be a normal condition. Granted, then, that the general health of the nation is far from what it should be, and looking from effects to causes, may we not pertinently enquire whether our diet is not largely responsible for this state of things? May it not be that wrong feeding and mal-nutrition are at the root of most disease? It needs no demonstrating that man’s health is directly dependent upon what he eats, yet how few possess even the most elementary conception of the principles of nutrition in relation to health? Is it not evident that it is because of this lamentable ignorance so many people nowadays suffer from ill-health?”

Yes, it could be written by many influencers today. But it wasn’t. Instead, it’s from No Animal Food: Two Essays and 100 Recipes by Rupert H Wheldon, published in 1910. He was an American photographer and a vegan activist. He was one of the first to promote veganism exclusively, though it is important to note that “vegan” didn’t appear until 1944, when Donald Watson coined it as an alternative to “non-dairy vegetarians.”

Why old cookbooks …

Haha, you’re here. So you get it. Maybe the proper question is: Why not old cookbooks?

Something is charming about having an old book tucked into your bookshelf. It’s about combining ancient wisdom with newfound thinking. It’s the starting point for how we’ve grown as a society.

And, no, you can’t get that from digital or video. [Though I am excited to be able to research all of these fabulous cookbooks online.]

There’s something about being able to touch the past, in book format, and bring it forward.

That video you watched earlier? Want to watch the recipe she cooked from the first Western cookbook?

Do you collect old cookbooks? What’s the oldest you have on hand?

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