For That "Final Touch" - just add Diamond Walnuts

This book of recipes was published by the California Walnut Growers Association, headquartered in Los Angeles. Like many of the grower co-operative cookbooks in this archive, it was used to market California produce. I’ve chosen to include publications like this one in The Community Cookbook Archive because it was put out by a collective group, and because agriculture and food played such an important (and complicated) role in the building of Los Angeles mythology. 

 

Like several similar books in this collection, this one was likely aimed at women, who made the majority of food-spending decisions for their households. Photos of women working in walnut production were also used for promotion. However, while many women did play an important role in walnut packing houses, publicity photographs often used models instead of actual workers - as is the case in the included picture of model Nell McKibbin packing Diamond Brand walnuts in the Walnut Growers Association packing house at 7th and Mill Streets in Downtown Los Angeles.

 

Franciscan Fathers were the ones to first cultivate English walnuts in California in the 1770s, but full orchards did not begin to appear in the Southland until the 1850s and ‘60s. William Wolfskill, whose name appears in other entries in this archive as the “father of Los Angeles citrus,” was an early grower of walnuts in the area. Around the same time, near Santa Barbara, Joseph Sexton planted the first commercial, soft-shell walnut groves in Southern California.

 

Southern California Walnut Growers Association was formed in LA as a farmers’ co-operative in 1896, with the goal both to improve pricing conditions and to help farmers standardize production. As walnuts were still such a young product in California there was great variation in the nuts customers purchased, and the unpredictability dampened demand. In 1912, the organization rebranded as the California Walnut Growers Association and began using the moniker “Diamond Walnuts” - under the influence of grower Charles C. Teague, who was also a leader in the California Fruit Growers exchange. As the walnut industry grew, the growers association sometimes functioned more like a cartel, setting prices at a state level. 

 

The association officially changed their name to Diamond Growers in 1956, moving to Stockton California at, and later becoming a publicly traded company rather than a co-operative. Today, the Campbell Soup Company owns Diamond Brand foods, but spun off the Diamond Nut business to Blue Road Capital in 2016. 

 

Today, California produces 99% of all walnuts grown in the US. 

 

----

Black & white photo of Nell McKibbin from the Security Pacific National Bank Collection, via LAPL (1929)

 

WALNUTS

For That "Final Touch" - just add Diamond Walnuts 

To Win New Cooking Fame just add Walnuts

 

AVOCADO

Calavo Book of Popular Avocado Recipes

Calavo: The Aristocrat of Salad Fruits

Library of Calavo Recipes

New Calavo Hostess Book, The

 

CITRUS

California Fruit Growers Exchange Recipes Culinary & Toilet

Salad Fashion Show 

Sunkist Cook Book 

Sunkist Holiday Bulletin

Sunkist Lemons bring out the flavor! 

Sunkist Orange Recipes for Year-round Freshness! 

Sunkist Recipes For Every Day

 

SALAD

Calavo: The Aristocrat of Salad Fruits

Charging The Human Battery 

Salad Fashion Show

 

 

Each book is being slowly digitized by hand. If you have particular interest in a certain cookbook, please reach out via the Contact Page, so it can be given priority.