Community Cook Books are an important part of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa New Zealand and Polynesia, for they have been used to raise funds for every conceivable type of building, items of furniture as well as day to day running expenses. These cook books have often been purchased by the same people who produced them, or by their neighbours, and they have been given as gifts to relatives throughout the world.

Many of these cook books are now butter- splattered, dog- eared and coverless, but they tell us much about our culinary traditions and our developing national cuisines.
Many of them will never find their way into libraries so the purpose of creating this Bibliography is to seek out those items which are still on the bookshelves of cooks and to create a comprehensive listing of cook books associated with the Anglican Church in Aotearoa New Zealand and Polynesia.

The Bibliography will include cook books produced by parishes, parochial districts, mission districts, co-operating ventures, orphanages, rest homes, schools, dioceses and whatever other sources or causes which are found. It is presently biased towards the South Island of New Zealand where most of the collecting has been undertaken to date, so it is important that our knowledge of the existence of these cook books becomes more widespread.

This Bibliography has been developed from two private collections as well as the very small collection held in the Christchurch Anglican Diocesan Archives.  It does not include cook books which are held in New Zealand and overseas libraries.   In time the information from these more public sources will be added to the Bibliography 

The impetus for this Bibliography came from the Marsden funded project “The Development of New Zealand’s Culinary Traditions” based at the Anthropology Department of the University of Otago. The bibliography was compiled by F Jane Teal, and is a work in progress  F Jane Teal © 2008

If using this source, please acknowledge source as Teal, F Jane . 1908  Towards a bibliography of Anglican Cookbooks.  http://www.kinderlibrary.ac.nz/research-tools/anglican-resources/Anglican-cookbooks.aspx