A Vintage Peanuts Cookbook

Somehow I’ve become the kind of person who buys vintage cookbooks.

In the spring, shortly after the COVID shutdown began, I bought a cookbook from 1912 published in conjunction with Washington, DC’s Heurich Brewery. At the end of July, I bought another cookbook through eBay, this one a Peanuts-themed Chex cereal cookbook published in 1991.

The cookbook arrived in the mail on Saturday in very good condition. I looked through it — twelve recipes — and realized that I was unlikely to ever make anything from it. Well, maybe Monkey Mush (ie., a banana pudding). The recipes are a bit limited, and I don’t usually eat Chex cereal.

Cover to Peanuts Chex cookbook

As I looked through the cookbook, I paid attention to the Peanuts artwork. And the more I looked at it, the more I wondered who had drawn the Peanuts illustrations.

Page detail showing Linus (left) and Charlie Brown

Take, for instance, the illustration of Linus and Charlie Brown above. It’s not Charles Schulz. They look mostly right, but even a cursory perusal of The Complete Peanuts 1991-1992 shows that the characters in the cookbook are sketchier than Schulz’s work. Whoever did the artwork did a creditable job aping Schulz’s style.

Inside front cover of Peanuts Chex cookbook

Still, even though I don’t know who drew it, nor am I likely to ever make anything from it, it’s a nice piece of Peanuts ephemera to have.

Published by Allyn Gibson

A writer, editor, journalist, sometimes coder, occasional historian, and all-around scholar, Allyn Gibson is the writer for Diamond Comic Distributors' monthly PREVIEWS catalog, used by comic book shops and throughout the comics industry, and the editor for its monthly order forms. In his over ten years in the industry, Allyn has interviewed comics creators and pop culture celebrities, covered conventions, analyzed industry revenue trends, and written copy for comics, toys, and other pop culture merchandise. Allyn is also known for his short fiction (including the Star Trek story "Make-Believe,"the Doctor Who short story "The Spindle of Necessity," and the ReDeus story "The Ginger Kid"). Allyn has been blogging regularly with WordPress since 2004.

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