Remember Postum? It was a roasted grain powder that was mixed with hot water to make a beverage. It was often considered a healthy alternative to coffee or tea. This Postum advertisement was near the back of a 1907 Pennsylvania community cookbook.

Do you have a tired appetite? (What the heck is a tired appetite? Is the same as being tired of a particular food?)

In any case, if this is a problem, here’s a 1918 advertisement with a solution – serve Morrell’s Ox Tongue.

Food is expensive – both a hundred years ago and now. It’s interesting to see how a 1918 advertisement for Quaker Oats framed the cost of meals around calories. Back then, apparently getting more calories per amount spent was considered a good thing.  Today, are people willing to spend more to get fewer calories?

Sometimes I come across hundred-year-old advertisements for brands that have long vanished from the scene. For example, I recently found an advertisement for Barrington Hall coffee. According to the ad, it is “baker-ized” and “steel cut.”

What the heck is steel-cut coffee? It sounds like it should be a type of oats and not coffee. And, baker-ized sounds like cakes or cookies rather than coffee.

The advertising slogan “When it rains it pours” has been around for a least 100 years.

I always find it challenging to interpret hundred-year-old bread recipes. The old recipes generally call for cakes of yeast, and I’m never quite sure how that translates when using modern dry yeasts.

So I was amazed when I saw a hundred-year-old advertisement for Fleischmann’s Yeast in the back of a 1917 cookbook. Was Fleischmann’s Yeast a cake back then? Perhaps the product has been refined and modernized across the years, but the same company has been around for at least a century.

I learn so much from old advertisements. For example, commercially produced baby bottles have been around for more than a hundred years.