Hannah Woolley. The Queen-like closet, or rich
cabinet stored with all manner of rare receipts for preserving,
candying and cookery. Fifth edition. London: 1684. (First
edition. 1670)
UA s002b13 |
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Woolley was probably the first woman cookbook author.
The frontispiece is a crude engraving of women at various tasks
in the kitchen. Typical of the period, the collection is a total
mishmash of recipes, e.g. flounder, bacon and snow cream on the
same page. But at that time these dishes would have appeared together
on the table. A supplement to the first edition expanded the Preserving
and Cookery sections. One writer has observed that Hannah Woolley
was unusual in that she lets you choose your own herbs or spices
according to personal taste, rather than dictate precise ingredients,
e.g. with reference to Gingerbread (1/236), "what sort of
spices you please", or, "garnish your dish as you please." |
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E. Smith. The compleat housewife,
or, accomplished gentlewoman's companion. 14th edition. London:
1750. (First edition 1727; Also published in Williamsburg, VA,
in 1742).
UA s004b10 |
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This could be the edition advertised for sale
in Quebec in 1811. Engraved frontispiece shows high-ceilinged
grand kitchen, women cooks and male servants, and the family seen
beyond in the dining room eating. Book concludes with tables settings
and 17-page index. Smith had been employed as a cook by "fashionable
families" for three decades, but her book had wide appeal
and was the most popular English cookbook of the first half of
the 1700s until the appearance of Mrs. Glasse.
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Richard Bradley. Country housewife
and lady's director. 2nd edition. London:1727/1732. 2 vols
UA s002b15-16 |
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In 1733 this copy belonged to Mary Tyrwhitt. The
author Bradley was a Professor of Botany in the University of
Cambridge, and a Fellow of the Royal Society. The frontispiece
is like a Dutch landscape painting, with the great house, fields,
farm buildings laid out, women milking and churning. His approach
is unusual: he progresses through the year, giving recipes month
by month, with garden notes and observations. His "herb soup"
made of cherville, spinach (spinage), celery (sallery), leeks
and beet cards (i.e. chard) reminds us that at that time "herbs"
encompassed all green vegetables, and this is just a good vegetable
soup. Lady Wager was the source of some of his recipes as well
as his patroness.
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Mrs. Dalgairns. The practice of
cookery: adapted to the business of every day life. Edinburgh:
1845. (First edition was published in 1829)
UA s005b23 |
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Sixteen editions of the cookbook were published in Edinburgh and London from 1829 to 1860. This copy is inscribed by Mrs. Maclean, wife of a surgeon attached to the Hyderabad Residency in India. The authoress lived in Dundee, Scotland, but she was born, raised, and married in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. A Boston/New York edition was published in 1830; in the 1830s the cookbook was advertised for sale by Montreal and Quebec booksellers. Catharine Parr Traill referred to it in her The backwoods of Canada (1835), telling her readers in connection with ”the badness of our roads” that she sends to the nearby town for her groceries, and when the team of horses brings them up she finds "rice, sugar, currants, pepper and mustard all jumbled into one mess." She goes on: "I think the recipe would cut quite a figure in Mrs. Dalgairn's Practice of Cookery under the original title of a "'bush pudding'."
Mrs. Dalgairns insists that she is not offering receipts for new dishes, but rather "clear instructions how to make those already established in public favour." Unlike most cookery writers of the time she seems not to have been a plagiarist, but to have tried, tested and modified reliable recipes that were widely known. This is a good source for Scottish recipes (Scots Seed Cake, Cocky Leeky Soup, Haggis), but her use of fruits and vegetables that would not have flourished in Scotland suggests that she had a broad audience in mind. Several recipes for "currie powder" and other Indian dishes would have endeared her to Mrs. Maclean in Hyderabad who owned this copy.
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Amelia Simmons. American cookery,
by an American orphan. Poughkeepsie, NY: 1815.
(First edition published in Hartford, CN, in 1796, and a second
edition later that year in Albany, NY)
UA s020b16 |
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This is the first cookbook published in the United
States of American authorship. There are several reprint editions
available. It was the first cookbook to address foods that were
indigenous to North America such as squash and corn, and the first
to mention the use of pearlash for leavening purposes. Simmons'
cookbook was well known in Upper Canada. It was advertised by
a Kingston bookseller in 1801, and regularly in Quebec in the
early 1800s.
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Lydia Maria Child. The American
frugal housewife. 21st edition. New York: 1838. (First edition
was published in 1829).
UA s001b22 |
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Lydia Child was a New England anti-slavery advocate.
She wrote on many subjects, but her cookbook which stressed inexpensive
ingredients and techniques became her family's principal source
of income. Child's cookbook was sold by Ontario booksellers from
1837 through the 1850s.
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Colin MacKenzie. MacKenzie's five
thousand receipts in all the useful and domestic arts. Pittsburgh:
1829. (Originally published London,1823, with 36 pages of recipes
added for U.S. edition).
UA s001b36 |
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It was probably the U.S. edition that was widely
advertised in Upper Canada after 1836. Several of MacKenzie's
recipes were used by the anonymous author of the first original
cookbook published in English Canada: The Frugal Housewife's
Manual by A.B. of Grimsby (1840). However, A.B.often altered
timings and temperatures and the names of cooking tools and ingredients.
For example, for a raising agent A.B. called for saleratus rather
than potash or pearlash, she beat eggs "light" rather
than "stiff", and she used "tablespoonsful"
rather than "dessertspoonsful" of yeast. MacKenzie's
book is a compendium of all sorts of craft techniques which he
sourced to dozens of British books, encyclopedias and magazines.
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Antoine Beauvilliers. L'art de cuisinier.
First edition. Paris: 1814
UA s016b17 |
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Associated with luxury foods, Beauvilliers was
"restaurateur" in Paris at La grande Taverne de Londres..
He was the kind of French chef and food writer deplored by British
cooks for their extravagance, especially by women writers appealing
to frugality and economy. This is the first volume only, devoted
to soups and meat. One writer credits Beauvilliers with the first
published recipe for sweet potatoes.
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Le confiseur royal. 5th ed.
By Louise-Béate-Augustine Friedel. Paris: 1818. (First
edition was published in 1801)
UA s015b08 |
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Una Abrahamson's copy has important Canadian associations.
It was owned by Madame Malhiot, née Elizabeth Gamelin,
daughter of a scion of the wealthy Montreal Gamelin family, and
wife of an important politician and landowner in Verchères,
Lower Canada in the late 1700s. The cookbook was advertised in
1819 by Montreal and Quebec booksellers Bossange et Papineau.
The three engraved plates show tools for cake decorating.
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Carême, Marie-Antonin. Le
maître d'hotel français. Paris: 1842. 2 vols.
UA s0156b2-3 |
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The author, who died in 1833, in his own time
was a superstar in the world of gastronomy. The dedication written
by the Marquis de Cussy refers to Carême as an immortal.
This book lays out menus for 15 guests or for 150 guests. Among
the members of royalty who were honoured with special dinners
à la russe over several days and months were the Emperor
Alexander, and the Prince Regent who was feted at his Brighton
Pavilion while Carême was resident in England. For the Prince
Regent, veal and peas were served à l'anglaise. |
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Mary F. Williamson
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Canadian highlights of the Abrahamson Collection
Compiled by Elizabeth Driver
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The
Skilful Housewife's Guide, Montreal [...], 1848
UA s043 b11 |
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One of a handful of culinary titles published
in Canada before 1850; an edition of a cookbook by the American
Mrs Abell
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The Canadian Settler's Guide,
by Mrs C.P. Traill, 7th ed., 1857
UA s0097 b25 |
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No 19th-century Canadian writer described better
than Traill does here how people prepared food in the backwoods
of southern Ontario; originally published as The
Female Emigrant's Guide in 1854 [1855], this is the first
Canadian cookbook published in a British edition, although most
of the culinary information was inexplicably removed by the London
publisher
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The Canadian Housewife's Manual
of Cookery, printed by William Gillespy, Hamilton, 1861
UA s049 b01 |
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Gillespy recognized the dearth of cookbooks suited
to Canadian conditions and tastes; his work is an early attempt
to shape a text for Canadian use; recently, I have been cooking
from this book and found the recipes reliable and good
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The Home Cook Book, Toronto:
Belford Bros, 1878
UA s048 b32 |
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Canada's first fund-raising (also called community)
cookbook, and the best-selling Canadian cookbook of the 19th century
(100,000 copies reported sold by 1885); a rare early edition of
a work first published in 1877; for the full publishing history,
see my Introduction to the 125th anniversary edition published
by Whitecap in 2002 |
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Directions
diverses, by Mère Caron, 2nd ed., Montreal, 1883
UA s043 b24 |
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The second French-language cookbook compiled in
Canada and the first designed for use in Quebec's Catholic educational
institutions; enjoyed a long popularity, running through eight
editions up to 1913
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Cook's Friend Cook Book, Toronto,
1881
UA s043 b02 |
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The first dated Canadian cookbook advertising a
commercial product, in this case, Cook's Friend Baking Powder
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Clever Cooking for Careful Cooks,
Montreal, 1888
2 copies: UA s050 b16 and UA s050 b17 |
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The earliest dated community cookbook in Quebec
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The Cook's True Friend, by
Mrs James McDonald, of Orangeville, 1889
UA s001 b14 |
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An early example of a cookbook by an individual,
named Canadian author, preceded only by Traill in 1854 [1855],
Constance Hart in Montreal in 1865, Mère Caron in Montreal
in 1878, Anne Clarke in Toronto in 1883, and Dora Fairfield in
Bath, Ontario, in 1888; Mrs McDonald's instructions are detailed
and authoritative, especially her Hints for Making Doughnuts
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Good Flour and How to Use It,
McAllister Milling Co., Peterborough
UA s041 b05 |
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An edition of the earliest flour-company cookbook
in Canada; undated, but probably about 1898
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The New Windsor Cook Book,
Windsor, N.S., 1898
UA s048 b42 |
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An early Nova Scotia cookbook, and the only known
copy
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Fredericton Cathedral Organ Fund
Cookery Book, 1907
UA s045 b41 |
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The first of three editions (1907, 1911, 1920)
of a popular Fredericton cookbook by the ladies of Christ Church
Anglican Cathedral; includes a sophisticated recipe for a regional
ingredient: Moose Meat Pie, with garlic, port wine, and red currant
jelly for flavourings
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Cobalt Souvenir and Cook Book,
1908-9
UA s045 b40 |
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A remarkable local book, featuring photographs
of Cobalt street scenes, mining landscapes, cooking in the bush,
and native people, and published in a town that literally grew
up overnight, out of the wilderness, after the discovery of silver
sparked a mining boom in 1903
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Modern Household Cookery Book,
Vancouver, nd [about 1909]
UA s066 b34 (also Canadian Cookbook Collection TX715.6 M625) |
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First cookbook from a British Columbia utility
company; features a cosmopolitan selection of recipes from Britain,
France, India and Spain, plus a section of 'Chinese Cookery' reflecting
the Asian immigration to Vancouver
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Two Hundred Tested Recipes,
by the ladies of the Chancel Guild of St John's Church, Saskatoon,
1910
UA s047 b17 |
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An early Saskatchewan cookbook; I have found only
four earlier Saskatchewan cookbooks, the earliest published in
1901
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The Country Cook or the M.A.C.
Cook Book, by Mary C. Hiltz and Mary C. Moxon, Winnipeg, 1922
UA s043 b30 |
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A rare first edition of a Western cookbook that
went through multiple editions from 1922 to 1951 and eventually
rivalled Nellie Pattinson's Canadian Cook Book in popularity;
there is only one other publicly held copy of the first edition,
at the Carberry Plains Museum in Manitoba
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The
Economical Cook Book, by the Ottawa Ladies Hebrew Benevolent
Society, Ottawa, 1915
UA s048 b46 |
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The first published collection of Jewish recipes
in Canada, containing, for example, directions for Matzo Pancake,
Potato Pancake, Pickled Herring, Noodles, Matzo Balls No. I, Matzo
Balls No. II, Matzo Pudding, Matzo Crimsel, Matzo Pie Crust, and
various pickle recipes (Constance Hart was the first Jewish author
of a cookbook in Canada, but her Household Recipes of 1865
contains only one Jewish recipe, Ball Soup)
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Canadian Cook Book by Nellie
Lyle Pattinson, 3rd ed., 1925
UA s048 b44 |
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An early edition of what became the most widely
used English-language classroom textbook, then home kitchen Bible,
in Canada; editions spanned the years 1923 to 1991 |
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Elizabeth Driver
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| Publications Describing Collection:
|
| Bryers, Janet. -- "The Una Abrahamson
Canadian Cookery Collection." -- Antique Showcase. -- Vol.
37, No. 2 (Sept.2001). -- [Toronto, Ont.]: Trajan Publishing Corp.,
2001. |
| Bibliographic Access |
| Holdings are accessible through the
library's online catalogue using the term "Una Abrahamson
Canadian Cookery Collection" and keyword selections. |
