I find most of my recipes that are not embedded in my head at www.allrecipes.com I was bamboozled though when I looked for Key Lime Pie, and many of them started out with Key-Lime Jello. NOT what I was looking for at all.

I use the BC site, too, and I dont care too much baking something using a bx of cake mix. I dont mind if Im in a hurry or its for kids ( they eat anything w/ sugar in it), but for adults I want a real from scratch cake - they taste better.
If you've everbought a cake or cookie or pastry or breads from a real from scratch everyday bakery - nothing else compares. sharet

I really like Fanny Farmer CBs the one I have is very old and has recipes for all the basics.

I hate those kind of recipes. I don't like to cook out of a box or can. Pillsbury is bad about that too. They are just trying to sell their products. When I buy cake mixes, I only buy Duncan Hines anyway. I know what you mean. I have the famous red cookbook, got it in 1971 & the new ones have screwed up the recipes. They have changed a lot of them around & not for the best either.

My BC cookbook was a bound book & thru the years it has come apart & I burned the corner one time by getting too close to stove. So I wanted to save it & went to Office Depot & bought a bunch of those plastic ring bound sheets & took book apart & then put in a 4in ring bound binder. Made a red cover for it & my 1971 book is safe & useable.

My favorite of all the old cook books, and I have a lot of them, is Meta Given's Encyclopedia of Cooking. It has all the old recipes and even a section on cooking game. Squirrel Stew anyone. It does have the best cake and cookie recipes of any cook book I have seen. One thing though, some of the recipes call for goose grease and I just can not seem to find it at Safeway....Was goose grease so readily available back in the mid century....what would the label look like I wonder...Mother Gooses' Great Goose Grease, 100% pure goose goodness.

I have the BC cookbook that I received at my wedding shower in 1967!! I also have three daughters that all cook and don't know who to leave it to :)

Oh, I love the old cookbooks, I collect cookbooks! Some of my favorite books are from the 30s. I even have a cookbook by some company that was promoting a product called "cottolene", I think its called, maybe from the late 1800s. A cotton oil. They said it cooked hotter, cleaner, less smoke, more digestable blah blah blah - very interesting ads. However, it must not have been that great cus I dont see it sold now, and I never heard my mom or GM talk about it.
(the book is online at manybook.net. This site has free downloads of public domain books, there are lots of old cookbooks here with very interesting recipes)sharet

As bearisgray said, many cookbooks such as BC change over the years. They do this at least partly to keep up with new trends in eating.

The red three-ring binder BC cookbook was my very first cookbook ever, and I got it in the summer of '78. It did have some canned and boxed ingredients in some recipes - but NOT in the cake recipes. At least my favorite chocolate double-layer cake recipe was from scratch.

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One of my favorites came from my Mom. It is so old (not a Betty Crocker) that it has one section that tells if you were lucky enough to live in a town with a freezer plant, you could rent boxes where you could put meat you kill and it would last a long time!!! Even some vegetables and fruits could be frozen, what a new idea!! My son had always loved it so finally, after more hints I gave it to him. It had some of the nicest recipes for a crisp sugar cookie I've ever had. Simple recipes, good food from fresh ingredients. I'm still sorry about not having it, and ask him every now and then to send me one of the recipes.