COOKBOOK WATCH

If you’ve been complaining about the high price of cookbooks, it’s worth noting that Smithmark Publishers has just released a $12.98 hardcover version of the 1991 revision of “The New Settlement Cookbook,” edited by Charles Pierce. The pages are not the heavyweight, high-gloss quality that many publishers use, but this is an excellent general cookbook to own. First printed by a Milwaukee Jewish humanitarian group in 1901 as “The Way to a Man’s Heart: The Settlement Cookbook” and revised many times since, the book is considered among the first printed collections of American ethnic recipes.