Cookbooks

Do you have an old recipe book, passed down or cherished to pieces? For many of us, food is laden with meaning, memories and links to our personal histories. To prepare food for others, to take the time to plan, buy ingredients, and make meals is a skill that can be learned from recipes others have written, tested, and passed on. However we learn to cook, there are threads of connection linking us to a collective desire to make and share good food. Printed large, (approximately 30"x 40") these pages are elevated from domestic tools to art, giving them the historical importance they deserve.

From the home of Anita Stewart, cookbook author and Food Laureate at University of Guelph.

Educational material given to Nancy Bowser (nee Caulford) in 1932 from the Toronto School Board. She was eight years old. It is now in the collection of Robin De Vuono, her granddaughter.

Wallet sized recipe book from 1866 owned by Mres. D. L. Bowman. It is opened to a sugar cookie recipe named "Kisses", which is very good. The wallet lives in the University of Guelph's Special Collections and Archives.

The recipe book owned first by Lydia Jarvis (nee Lush), then her daughter Muriel Appleyard (nee Jarvis), now by Nancy Fraser (nee Appleyard). This book is displayed with a popover recipe written out by Muriel on an envelope from Western University, where she studied, with a King George stamp from 1928. Does anyone know what the "Blue Bag" is or does?

This ledger was found at Park Grocery and is from 1907 when it was a butcher shop. The items beside the ledger were found inside the book.

This book was found at the Whitehorse museum. I am grateful the staff were willing to pull it out of their display and then take high resolution images of this book that would have come with a Kalamazoo stove.

This book is open to Ann Uys' recipe for Tipsy Tart. Her son would introduce this recipe to the food companies he worked for in South Africa, the UK, and Canada, becoming a multinational favourite.

Ellen Davignon, a former baker who would go through seven tonnes of flour making bread, cinammon buns, fruit tarts and meat pies from May to September at her bakery between Whitehorse and Teslin in the 1970s and 80s. This is one of her cookbooks - note the annotations for bigger batches in the margins.

cookbooks​

cookbooks