Madison Country Cookbook is a taste of cooking from the 'heart' of the Heartland -- Madison County, Iowa. Madison County is also the birthplace of John Wayne and home of the picturesque Covered Bridges, the locale for the popular Bridges of Madison County by Robert Waller.


Recently, our parish (St. Joseph's Catholic Church) spearheaded an effort on behalf of the community to put together a special cookbook that would represent some of the traditions of the Winterset community. The result is a book that contains recipes and stories from the community.

The result is that in national competition, it was chosen as the 1994 Midwest Winner of the Tabasco Community Cookbook sponsored by the McIlhenny Company. Also the cookbook was selected as one of 20 Iowa products (out of 250 entries) featured on QVC, the national cable home shopping network as part of QVS's "Quest for America's Best - the 50 in 50 Tour."

The book contains over 500 down home recipes from participants of the community of Winterset, the hub town for covered-bridge exploring. The cookbook has a uniqueness: in addition to the recipes and folk-art illustrations, stories and anecdotes by participants about events and sites of the area and different festivals blend throughout the book. Also, one of the highlights is an introduction and recipe by Georgia Waller, wife of James Waller, author of the best selling novel The Bridges of Madison County.

It is in its 12 th printing with some 25,000 books already sold.

Sample of recipes

Order Information


Send $21.95 to

Cookbook
Dept I
St. Joseph's Catholic Church
607 West Green
Winterset, IA 50273-1641
(515) 462-1083

[Includes shipping in the US]


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