All cooks have their tools. For some, that means knives and rolling pins. For Philadelphia Chef Fritz Blank, it includes a library of 10,000 cookery books he uses as often as any utensil. Chef Fritz taps his cookery library to create menus that are deeply rooted in the diverse culinary traditions of Europe and America. The music aficionado and former dairy farmer, clinical microbiologist and military officer collects books in all these fields, but his culinary collection has become a Philadelphia institution.

Here scholarly tomes vie with community cookbooks, entire newspaper food sections, menus and recipe pamphlets for shelf space. Even ephemera such as advertising postcards are not beneath notice in Blank’s eclectic and egalitarian library.