Culinary Landmarks

Culinary Landmarks is a definitive history and bibliography of Canadian cookbooks from the beginning, when La cuisinière bourgeoise was published in Quebec City in 1825, to the mid-twentieth century. Over the course of more than ten years Elizabeth Driver researched every cookbook published within the borders of present-day Canada, whether a locally authored text or a Canadian edition of a foreign work. Every type of recipe collection is included, from trade publishers' bestsellers and advertising cookbooks, to home economics textbooks and fund-raisers from church women's groups. The entries for over 2,200 individual titles are arranged chronologically by their province or territory of publication, revealing cooking and dining customs in each part of the country over 125 years. Full bibliographical descriptions of first and subsequent editions are augmented by author biographies and corporate histories of the food producers and kitchen-equipment manufacturers, who often published the books. Driver's excellent general introduction sets out the evolution of the cookbook genre in Canada, while brief introductions for each province identify regional differences in developments and trends. Four indexes and a 'Chronology of Canadian Cookbook History' provide other points of access to the wealth of material in this impressive reference book.

Culinary Landmarks is a definitive history and bibliography of Canadian cookbooks from the beginning, when La cuisinière bourgeoise was published in Quebec City in 1825, to the mid-twentieth century. Over the course of more than ten years Elizabeth Driver researched every cookbook published within the borders of present-day Canada, whether a locally authored text or a Canadian edition of a foreign work. Every type of recipe collection is included, from trade publishers' bestsellers and advertising cookbooks, to home economics textbooks and fund-raisers from church women's groups. The entries for over 2,200 individual titles are arranged chronologically by their province or territory of publication, revealing cooking and dining customs in each part of the country over 125 years. Full bibliographical descriptions of first and subsequent editions are augmented by author biographies and corporate histories of the food producers and kitchen-equipment manufacturers, who often published the books. Driver's excellent general introduction sets out the evolution of the cookbook genre in Canada, while brief introductions for each province identify regional differences in developments and trends. Four indexes and a 'Chronology of Canadian Cookbook History' provide other points of access to the wealth of material in this impressive reference book.

The Mountain State's irregular borders and rugged geography are home to a fascinating mix of cultures, landscapes and foods. West Virginia's culinary history is rooted among the native fauna and flora that early residents hunted and foraged, and the taste of pawpaws and ramps is familiar across the state. Immigrants brought international flavors to Appalachian cuisine, resulting in local traditions like moonshine and the iconic pepperoni roll. Historian, author and West Virginia native Shannon Colaianni Tinnell explores a history that is still being written by a new generation hungry for tradition and authenticity.

In the twenty-first century, food is media – it is not just on plates, but in literature and on screens, displayed in galleries, studios, and public places. Canadian Culinary Imaginations provokes new conversations about the food-related concepts, memories, emotions, cultures, practices, and tastes that make Canada unique. This collection brings together academics, writers, artists, journalists, and curators to discuss how food mediates our experiences of the nation and the world. Together, the contributors reveal that culinary imaginations reflect and produce the diverse bodies, contexts, places, communities, traditions, and environments that Canadians inhabit, as well as their personal and artistic sensibilities. Arranged in four thematic sections – Indigeneity and foodways; urban, suburban, and rural environments; cultural and national lineages; and subversions of categories – the essays in this collection indulge a growing appetite for conversations about creative engagements with food and the world at large. As the essays and images in Canadian Culinary Imaginations demonstrate, food is more than sustenance – as language and as visual and material culture, it holds the power to represent and remake the world in unexpected ways.

During the Second World War, as Canada struggled to provide its allies with food, public health officials warned that malnutrition could derail the war effort. Posters admonished Canadians to "Eat Right" because "Canada Needs You Strong" while cookbooks helped housewives become "housoldiers" through food rationing, menu substitutions, and household production. Ian Mosby explores the symbolic and material transformations that food and eating underwent as the Canadian state took unprecedented steps into the kitchens of the nation, changing the way women cooked, what their families ate, and how people thought about food. Canadians, in turn, rallied around food and nutrition to articulate new visions of citizenship for a new peacetime social order.

Cookbooks. Menus. Ingredients. Dishes. Pots. Kitchens. Markets. Museum exhibitions. These objects, representations, and environments are part of what the volume calls the material cultures of food. The book features leading scholars, professionals, and chefs who apply a material cultural perspective to consider two relatively unexplored questions: 1) What is the material culture of food? and 2) How are frameworks, concepts, and methods of material culture used in scholarly research and professional practice? This book acknowledges that materiality is historically and culturally specific (local), but also global, as food both transcends and collapses geographical and ideological borders. Contributors capture the malleability of food, its material environments and “stuff,” and its representations in media, museums, and marketing, while following food through cycles of production, circulation, and consumption. As many of the featured authors explore, food and its many material and immaterial manifestations not only reflect social issues, but also actively produce, preserve, and disrupt identities, communities, economic systems, and everyday social practices. The volume includes contributions from and interviews with a dynamic group of scholars, museum and information professionals, and chefs who represent diverse disciplines, such as communication studies, anthropology, history, American studies, folklore, and food studies.

What did you eat for dinner today? Did you make your own cheese? Butcher your own pig? Collect your own eggs? Drink your own home-brewed beer? Shanty bread leavened with hops-yeast, venison and wild rice stew, gingerbread cake with maple sauce, and dandelion coffee – this was an ordinary backwoods meal in Victorian-era Canada. Originally published in 1855, Catharine Parr Traill’s classic The Female Emigrant’s Guide, with its admirable recipes, candid advice, and astute observations about local food sourcing, offers an intimate glimpse into the daily domestic and seasonal routines of settler life. This toolkit for historical cookery, redesigned and annotated in an edition for use in contemporary kitchens, provides readers with the resources to actively use and experiment with recipes from the original Guide. Containing modernized recipes, a measurement conversion chart, and an extensive glossary, this volume also includes discussions of cooking conventions, terms, techniques, and ingredients that contextualize the social attitudes, expectations, and challenges of Traill’s world and the emigrant experience. In a distinctive and witty voice expressing her can-do attitude, Catharine Parr Traill’s The Female Emigrant’s Guide unlocks a wealth of information on historical foodways and culinary exploration.

From the anthropological point of view, eating means to ingest qualities, but also defects. Digestion is a double process, encompassing both assimilation and distribution through transformation. This book is based on the contributions of specialists in various fields of activity, including anthropology, medicine, cultural studies, archaeology, theatre, linguistics, who explore how we understand the cultural heritage of food, and how this defines the stratification of society. Providing insights into the compatibility and incompatibility of physical and cultural food, this book offers a higher level of understanding of the world in which we live.