Escoffier is mainly a certain stratum of French hotel food ... not that it's not an interesting book, but it has little to do with what was going on in the public in general. for the US, the equivalent of Escoffier (actually published earlier and much more interesting) is a book called "The Epicurean" by a guy named Charles Ranhofer (chef at Delmonicos). supposedly, they both stole recipes from the same place, but ranhofer has really fascinating stuff on how kitchens, equipment and menu organization went in those days. The problem with general cookbooks is that there just weren't very many of them pre 1920s. before then, people cooked what their mother's cooked, or they had staff who presumably already knew how to cook. interestingly, the LA Times was running food stories much before most other newspapers, because so many people here were transplants who were living away from family and that support network. The classics tend to be a couple of older books -- the virginia housewife, etc. these are widely available in reprint.
this website has some cool stuff.
