Marilyn Monroe’s Personal Cookbooks go up for Auction

Two cookbooks owned and used by Marilyn Monroe are to be auctioned off by Siegel Auction Galleries on 22 June, and they are expected to fetch up to $75,000 between them.

The two annotated, food-stained and well-thumbed 1950s cookbooks suggest the most iconic actress of all time was also something of a cook off-camera, with handwritten recipes for classic French dishes, grocery shopping lists and printed meal schedules peppering the pages.

The lot includes a copy of The New Fanny Farmer Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (published by Little, Brown & Co., copyright 1951) which reveals a host of hidden treasures inserted among the pages, like a recipe for Avery Island French dressing, a handwritten menu for beef bourguignon and marrow bone soup, plus a hand-written grocery list including rib roast, tomatoes, tomatoes, milk, cream and coffee.

The second book, The New Joy of Cooking (by Irma Bombauer and Marion Bombauer Becker, 1953 edition) includes a deli business card and a typed daily diet complete with an unusual nightcap.

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The schedule lists options for an 8am breakfast, including orange juice or stewed prunes, a bowl of hot cereal for breakfast, along with a cup of milk or weak cocoa and two slices of toast and butter.

A carb-heavy lunch at 1pm, including a boiled egg, potato, spaghetti or noodles with bread or toast and cooked fruit or jello.

And finally, a protein-based dinner at 6.30pm, with a choice of lean beef, chicken, lamb, sweetbread, chicken liver or fish and perhaps most surprisingly eggnog at 11pm.

John Zuckerman of Siegel Auction Galleries told The Times: "Being so famous and going out for dinner was difficult... The paparazzi weren't quite as big as they are today but they were certainly following her around... there was no Uber Eats or anything like that."