Explore the real-world places that appear in Baking Yesteryear by B. Dylan Hollis. Each location on the map shows what happens there in the novel, the real history of the place, and what's there today. Featured locations include Kellogg's Battle Creek Sanitarium, Australian War Memorial, The Great Plains Wheat Belt, Campbell Soup Company Headquarters, The National Archives at College Park and 7 more.
Battle Creek, Michigan — Birthplace of Cornflake Macaroons
The 1900s Cornflake Macaroons are one of Hollis's featured recipes from the earliest decade of the book. Cornflakes were a novelty health food at the turn of the century, and bakers quickly discovered that their crunch and sweetness made them a brilliant macaroon base. Hollis highlights how everyday Americans turned a sanitarium diet food into a genuinely delicious treat, a running theme throughout Baking Yesteryear: humble ingredients elevated by ingenuity.
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg invented cornflakes at the Battle Creek Sanitarium in 1894 as part of his strict vegetarian health regimen. His brother W.K. Kellogg commercialized the cereal and founded the Kellogg Company in 1906, launching one of America's most enduring food brands.
The original sanitarium building still stands and is now part of the Hart-Dole-Inouye Federal Center. The Kellogg Company remains headquartered in Battle Creek, which bills itself as the 'Cereal Capital of the World.' The Kellogg's cereal brand is now owned by Kellanova.
Visit: Kellogg's Cereal City (Closed) / Battle Creek Visitor Center (historic site)
Treloar Crescent, Campbell, ACT, Australia — Home of the ANZAC Biscuit
The 1910s ANZAC Biscuits are among the most storied recipes in Baking Yesteryear. Hollis traces these golden oat-and-golden-syrup biscuits to the wives and women's groups who baked them to send to Australian and New Zealand soldiers fighting in Gallipoli and the Western Front during World War I. They were made without eggs — a scarce commodity — and were sturdy enough to survive the long sea voyage. Hollis celebrates them as a biscuit born of love and wartime pragmatism.
ANZAC biscuits became iconic during World War I, when the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps fought at Gallipoli in 1915. The name 'ANZAC' is legally protected in Australia and New Zealand, and any commercial product called an ANZAC biscuit must adhere to the traditional recipe.
ANZAC biscuits are still baked in enormous quantities every April 25th (ANZAC Day) across Australia and New Zealand. The Australian War Memorial in Canberra houses an extensive collection of WWI artifacts and honors the legacy of the soldiers for whom the biscuit was named.
Visit: Australian War Memorial (museum)
Wichita, Kansas — Heartland of Depression-Era Peanut Butter Bread
The 1930s Peanut Butter Bread is one of Hollis's standout recipes from the Depression decade. With butter and eggs expensive or scarce, home bakers found that peanut butter could provide richness and fat in a single-loaf bread that required almost nothing else. Hollis presents this as a triumph of Depression-era ingenuity — a bread that tastes indulgent while being born out of necessity, and one that consistently surprises modern tasters who expect it to taste austere.
The Great Plains states were devastated simultaneously by the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, collapsing wheat and crop prices while driving rural families into poverty. Home economists employed by the USDA and land-grant universities published pamphlets promoting nutrient-dense, low-cost recipes to help families survive on next to nothing.
Kansas remains one of the largest wheat-producing states in the U.S. Wichita's Exploration Place science museum features exhibits on Kansas history including the Dust Bowl era. The Kansas State University extension service is still publishing practical home baking guidance as it did in the 1930s.
Visit: Exploration Place (museum)
Camden, New Jersey — Origin of Tomato Soup Cake
The 1950s Tomato Soup Cake is perhaps the recipe most emblematic of what Baking Yesteryear is all about: a dish so counterintuitive it sounds like a dare, yet so genuinely delicious it converts every skeptic. Hollis highlights how Campbell's Soup Company actively promoted the recipe on their soup can labels and in company cookbooks, turning condensed tomato soup into a secret spice cake ingredient that added moisture, color, and a subtle warmth. It became one of the most viral recipes of the postwar era.
Campbell Soup Company was founded in Camden in 1869 and introduced condensed soup in 1897. By the postwar 1950s, Campbell's was one of America's most powerful food brands, and its marketing department famously promoted recipes using soup as an ingredient — a strategy that shaped American cooking for decades.
Campbell Soup Company relocated its headquarters to Norwalk, Connecticut in 2022 after over 150 years in Camden. The Camden waterfront area has undergone significant redevelopment. Campbell's continues to print the Tomato Soup Cake recipe on select product packaging to this day.
8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, Maryland — WWII Rationing Records
The 1940s Chocolate Sauerkraut Cake is one of the most audaciously strange recipes Hollis features — a moist, rich chocolate cake that hides shredded sauerkraut in its batter, approximating the texture of coconut and adding a faint tang that makes the chocolate sing. Hollis contextualizes it within WWII rationing: fresh coconut and certain dairy products were restricted, so cooks improvised brilliantly. The cake is a testament to the resourceful American home baker working under wartime constraints documented in government records.
The National Archives at College Park holds billions of records from the U.S. federal government, including the Office of Price Administration records documenting the WWII rationing program. From 1942 to 1945, staples like sugar, butter, and canned goods were rationed, forcing home cooks to find creative substitutions.
The National Archives at College Park is open to researchers and the public and houses one of the most extensive archival collections in the world. Visitors can request access to original WWII-era government records including rationing booklets and home economics publications.
Visit: National Archives at College Park (historic site)
Plano, Texas — Home of Potato Chip Cookies
The 1970s Potato Chip Cookies are one of Hollis's most beloved discoveries — a shortbread-style butter cookie studded with crushed potato chips that delivers an extraordinary salty-sweet crunch. The recipe emerged in the 1970s as the American snack food industry boomed and home bakers began experimenting with chips as an ingredient. Hollis presents it as a moment when snack culture crossed into baking culture, producing something that consistently astounds modern tasters with how good it actually is.
Herman Lay founded the Lay's potato chip company in Nashville in 1938 and merged with Frito Company in 1961 to create Frito-Lay, which was later acquired by PepsiCo. The 1970s marked a massive expansion of the American snack food industry, with potato chips becoming a household staple across the country.
Frito-Lay's North American headquarters is located in Plano, Texas. The company operates dozens of manufacturing plants across the U.S. and potato chip cookies have seen a viral revival thanks in large part to Hollis's social media presence and Baking Yesteryear.
Fallbrook, California — 'Avocado Capital,' Home of Avocado Pie
The 1960s Avocado Pie is one of the most striking recipes in Baking Yesteryear — a chilled, creamy pie with a distinctly retro lime-green hue that looks like it belongs on a Jell-O mold buffet table. Hollis traces it to the California avocado craze of the 1960s, when California Avocado Association recipe pamphlets pushed avocados into every corner of American cuisine, including dessert. He delights in how genuinely tasty the result is despite its alarming appearance.
Fallbrook, California earned the nickname 'Avocado Capital of the World' during the 20th century, when San Diego County was the heart of American avocado cultivation. The California Avocado Association, founded in 1915, was famous for distributing promotional cookbooks and pamphlets with experimental avocado recipes throughout the mid-century.
Fallbrook still hosts the annual Avocado Festival, one of the largest food festivals in Southern California. While commercial avocado production has shifted increasingly to Mexico, California remains a significant producer and the Fallbrook area retains its identity as the historic center of the American avocado industry.
Visit: Fallbrook Avocado Festival (landmark)
300 West 57th Street, New York City — Testing Kitchen of the Century
Good Housekeeping's testing kitchens and cookbook publications are among the primary historical sources Hollis drew from in compiling Baking Yesteryear. The magazine's recipe archives span every decade of the 20th century, capturing the evolution of American baking from cornflake novelties to avocado curiosities. Hollis's methodology — evaluating recipes from antique cookbooks and testing them obsessively — mirrors the scientific approach the Good Housekeeping Institute pioneered in their own kitchens.
Good Housekeeping magazine was founded in 1885 and established its famous testing institute in 1900. For over a century, the institute's kitchens on West 57th Street tested recipes and consumer products, awarding the iconic Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. Its cookbooks and recipe cards became touchstones of American domestic life.
Good Housekeeping magazine, now published by Hearst, is still headquartered at 300 West 57th Street in Midtown Manhattan. The Good Housekeeping Institute continues to test products and publish recipes, though its cultural dominance has been challenged by the rise of food blogs and social media creators like Hollis himself.
Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. — American Food History Archive
The Smithsonian's food history collections — including its Julia Child kitchen exhibit and vast archive of American culinary artifacts — represent exactly the kind of historical record Hollis mines in Baking Yesteryear. The museum preserves original equipment, cookbooks, and recipe pamphlets from every decade of the 20th century, making it the physical embodiment of the culinary time travel Hollis undertakes in the book. The Chocolate Potato Cake, the ANZAC Biscuits, the Sauerkraut Cake — their contexts live in places like this.
The National Museum of American History opened in 1964 and has built one of the most significant food history collections in the world. In 2012, it permanently installed Julia Child's actual Cambridge, Massachusetts kitchen, donated by Child herself before her death in 2004.
The museum is free and open to the public year-round on the National Mall. The Julia Child kitchen exhibit remains one of the most visited displays, and the museum's food history program regularly presents lectures and events on the cultural history of American cooking.
Visit: Smithsonian National Museum of American History (museum)
130 NW Main Street, Blackfoot, Idaho — The Chocolate Potato Cake
The 1910s Chocolate Potato Cake — one of the most surprising recipes Hollis uncovers — uses mashed potatoes to create a fudgy, incredibly moist chocolate cake that predates the boxed cake mix by decades. Hollis marvels at how the potato disappears completely into the batter, leaving only its moisture and starch behind. The recipe comes from an era when Idaho potato farming was exploding and home economists were developing ingenious ways to incorporate the humble spud into every corner of the meal — including dessert.
Idaho's potato industry took off after the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 allowed refrigerated transport of produce. By the 1910s, Idaho was already producing millions of pounds of potatoes annually, and home economists and USDA extension agents were publishing potato-centric recipe booklets to encourage consumption.
Blackfoot, Idaho calls itself the 'Potato Capital of the World' and is home to the Idaho Potato Museum, which opened in 1988. The museum houses a vast collection of potato-related memorabilia, vintage farm equipment, and the world's largest potato chip. It is a genuinely beloved roadside attraction.
Visit: Idaho Potato Museum (museum)
5th Avenue & 42nd Street, New York City — Archive of Antique Cookbooks
Baking Yesteryear is built on exactly the kind of antique cookbook research that institutions like the NYPL Rare Books Division make possible. Hollis describes combing through hundreds of vintage cookbooks — some dating to the 1900s — to find the 101 recipes that made the final cut. The NYPL holds one of the most extensive culinary history collections in the world, including promotional pamphlets from companies like Jell-O, Crisco, and Campbell's that drove many of the century's most bizarre baking trends.
The New York Public Library's main branch on Fifth Avenue opened in 1911 and quickly became one of the world's great research libraries. Its rare books and manuscripts division holds over 50,000 culinary items, including some of the oldest cookbooks in existence and an unparalleled collection of 20th-century American food advertising ephemera.
The NYPL's main branch — officially the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building — underwent a major renovation completed in 2016 and is open to the public. Its culinary collection is accessible to researchers, and the library regularly hosts food history exhibitions and programming.
Visit: New York Public Library — Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (library)
Lancaster County, Pennsylvania — Heritage of Sauerkraut Baking
The use of sauerkraut in the 1940s Chocolate Sauerkraut Cake has deep roots in Pennsylvania Dutch culinary tradition, which Hollis acknowledges as part of the recipe's surprising legitimacy. German-American communities in Lancaster County had been incorporating fermented cabbage into savory and sweet preparations for over two centuries before wartime rationing made the technique suddenly fashionable nationwide. Hollis frames this as one of immigrant food culture's quiet contributions to mainstream American baking.
Lancaster County's Pennsylvania Dutch community descends from German and Swiss immigrants who arrived in the 17th and 18th centuries. Their culinary traditions — rooted in preservation, fermentation, and frugality — produced a distinctive regional cuisine that included sauerkraut in preparations that surprised outsiders but reflected a deeply practical and flavorful cooking philosophy.
Lancaster County is one of Pennsylvania's top tourist destinations, with millions of visitors annually coming to experience Amish and Pennsylvania Dutch culture. Farmers markets in Lancaster city and towns like Bird-in-Hand and Intercourse still sell homemade sauerkraut alongside traditional baked goods.
Visit: Central Market Lancaster (historic site)
More by B. Dylan Hollis: All B. Dylan Hollis books
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