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Digestible Bits and Bites #98, June 2021

Digestible Bits and Bites

The monthly newsletter of the
Culinary Historians of Canada
Number 98, June 2021
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A rhubarb tease: Last month's challenge to use rhubarb as an ingredient has been met with a flood of responses on our Facebook page, but also a request to push the deadline back to June 25, to allow for those lovely coral-coloured stems to sprout up in the cooler parts of the country.

For this month then, just one picture, from CHC Honorary Lifetime Member Mya Sangster, who asks "Is this the earliest receipt for a rhubarb tart?" It comes from The Compleat Confectioner by Hannah Glasse (1760), who writes: "Take stalks of English rhubarb, that grow in the gardens, peel and cut it the size of gooseberries; sweeten it, and make them as you do gooseberry tarts."

 

Index

  1. CHC News & Upcoming Events

  2. News & Opportunities

  3. Destinations

  4. Food for Thought (book reviews)

  5. Events of Interest

  6. International Conferences


1. CHC News and Upcoming Events

 

Photo by Matthew Blackett

Packaged Toronto

Join us on Thursday, June 24, at 7:30 p.m. (EDT) for Packaged Toronto: Vintage Food Packaging & The Companies Behind Them. Researcher and writer Jamie Bradburn will talk about historical food and drink packaging and the companies behind them as featured in a new book from the publishers of Spacing magazine: Packaged Toronto: A Collection of the City's Historic Design.

In Packaged Toronto, Spacing’s writers teamed up with City of Toronto museum curators to reveal a treasure trove of early local package design from the city’s vast collection. Through detailed photography and historical essays focused on an underserved period of Canadian design, Packaged Toronto takes readers on a journey back in time to the period between 1870 and 1950 to witness the emergence of the city’s aesthetic. Jamie Bradburn focuses on some of the companies and products from this period, from Mr. Christie’s Cookie Tin for Soldiers to Harry Horne’s Double Cream Custard Powder, and much more.

Jamie Bradburn is a Toronto-based writer and historian. He writes a weekly history quiz for the Toronto Star and regularly contributes to TVOntario’s website. His work has appeared in several books published by Spacing; he cowrote their 50 Objects That Define Toronto. For a decade, he contributed to Torontoist’s “Historicist” column, earning Heritage Toronto and National Magazine Awards.

Admission: $19.10; $11.34 (CHC members). Ticket holders will receive a coupon good for a $5 discount on the book, good through June 30. Tickets are available on Eventbrite.
 
Save the Date: Mrs. Dalgairns on July 27
On Tuesday, July 27, culinary historian and CHC honorary lifetime member Mary F. Williamson will talk about her new book Mrs. Dalgairns's Kitchen: Rediscovering "The Practice of Cookery" , an in-depth look at a cookbook first published in 1829. Mary Williamson will be joined by another esteemed lifetime member, Elizabeth Baird, who will demonstrate some updated recipes from the book. More information and ticket details coming soon!
 
Taste Canada Hall of Fame Nominations
The Culinary Historians of Canada are pleased to announce that nominations are open for this year’s Taste Canada Hall of Fame Awards, known in French as Le Temple de la Renommée des Saveurs du Canada.
 
The honour was created in 2009 to recognize Elizabeth Driver’s massive achievement in researching and writing Culinary Landmarks: A Bibliography of Canadian Cookbooks, 1825–1949 (University of Toronto Press). In 2010, the Hall of Fame also began to honour authors posthumously for their contribution to Canada’s culinary history and almost two centuries of Canadian cookbooks. Ever since, there have been two annual Hall of Fame Awards—one to recognize current living authors and the other for authors deserving of posthumous appreciation.

As the first inductee, Liz Driver has presented the awards at the ceremony every year, along with a member of the Culinary Historians of Canada since 2014, when the Culinary Historians began their sponsorship of the awards. To date, there are 29 culinary stars in the Taste Canada Hall of Fame. (The current living and posthumous inductees to the Taste Canada Hall of Fame are posted on our website, with photos and bios.)

The nomination criteria require that the author be Canadian or reside in Canada and deserving of recognition for a landmark achievement and/or a longstanding contribution to Canadian culinary books, either a stellar book or a body of work, in any language. The Hall of Fame Award recognizes Canada’s culinary heroes who, through books, have helped to shape our distinctive food culture in a significant way or who have influenced our perspective of it, and thus have had a lasting impact on Canadian cuisine.

This year’s inductees will be announced at the annual Taste Canada Awards ceremony in the autumn!

Nomination Process
  1. Choose the living and/or deceased Canadian author you think most deserves to be inducted into the Taste Canada Hall of Fame / Le Temple de la Renommée des Saveurs du Canada. The author(s) must be deserving of recognition for a landmark achievement and/or a longstanding contribution to Canadian culinary books. They have written a stellar book or body of work in any language.
  2. Write a text—as short or as long as necessary—to persuade the judges that your selected author should be this year’s inductee. Your aim should be to champion the author, rather than present a resumé. Convey to the judges, who may not be as familiar with the author as you are, how that person has shaped our distinctive food culture or influenced our perspective of it. Explain how the author’s stellar culinary book or body of work has had a lasting impact on Canadian cuisine.
  3. Send your submission by Friday, June 18 to Liz Driver (647-526-4877 evenings, liz.driver@sympatico.ca) and Fiona Lucas (416-781-8153 evenings, fiona@culinaryhistorians.ca).
 

Just A Bite Project

By Fiona Lucas

CHC’s Board of Directors is pleased to announce a new volunteer project, sponsored by a grant from the New Horizons for Seniors Program. Tentatively titled "Just a Bite: Summer Food Memories from Ontario Seniors", it will be a collection of food memories from summers long past, a project to preserve and share youthful memories of meals eaten, gardens harvested, festivals celebrated, country fairs attended between the summer and fall equinoxes.

We hope to hear from as many cultural groups and geographical areas as possible around Ontario. The grant specifies Ontario, but we want members from other provinces to be inspired. While its final forms are still undetermined (booklet? website? recipe box? recurring program?), the collection is to be a repository of historical memories for future researchers.

Right now, the core committee is formulating a workbook of questions to elicit stories, memories, anecdotes and photographs. The workbook will be both paper and electronic, depending on who is filling it out. Over the summer, it will be shared widely among seniors’ groups, cultural groups, clubs, institutions, associations and service organizations. We’ve already amassed a very long contact list, which is still growing. Happily, initial interest shown by early contact with a few groups is strong.

The grant’s deadline for completion is February 28, 2022. Planning is well underway, so we hope to share more details soon. We anticipate needing volunteer readers and fact checkers for the submissions, and copy editors, layout editors and social media experts for the final products. If you are already interested, you can ask for more info or jump in by joining our next Zoom meeting on June 10 at 8:15 p.m. EDT. Either way, contact info@culinaryhistorians.ca. We look forward to Just a Bite becoming a legacy project for CHC with your help!
 

Rural Women's Studies Conference: Report

By Fiona Lucas

CHC was pleased to sponsor three panels at the Rural Women’s Studies Association Triennial Conference, hosted online from May 11 to 15 by the University of Guelph in Ontario. The conference theme was Kitchen Table Talk to Global Forum. Attendees came from all over the world and offered talks on a very wide set of international topics relating to rural women.

CHC’s first panel, From Rural Hearth to Cookstove, featured four speakers embracing rural women from the late 17th to early 20th centuries. Chef Chantal Véchambre started the session with How Did French Women Cook in Atlantic Canada in the Early Decades of Settlement? She provided a thorough overview of Acadian foodways, based on her award-winning book French Taste in Atlantic Canada, 1604–1758: A Gastronomic History (2012, with Anne-Marie Lane Jonah). Next was independent scholar and beer historian Gary Gillman, who introduced us to Margaret Simpson: Pioneer Publican-Brewer of Upper Canada. Simpson was a Scotswoman who became a successful early entrepreneur as an inn and tavern keeper. In the third paper, Catharine Parr Traill’s Nine Kitchens, culinary historian Fiona Lucas traced the descriptive details of the four kitchens most revealed in the Traill family’s writings. Fourth to present was John Ota on Maud’s Kitchens, Maud being L.M. Montgomery, author of the Anne of Green Gables novels. Excerpts from Maud's diaries were convincingly voiced by Julia Armstrong. John is the author of The Kitchen (2020), the bestselling book about his search through history for the perfect kitchen.

Our second panel was Women: Recipes and Remembering. CHC president Carolyn Crawford, a dairy farmer and cookbook collector, related the delicious story of her grandmother and four great-aunts, the Berry sisters, and their manuscript cookbooks, in Picking "Berrys": Out of Five Old Chinguacousy Kitchens. Following Carolyn came writer Suzanne Evans with Biography of The Five Roses Cook Book (1932), Aid to POW Ethel Mulvany. Along with the battered cookbook that reminded her of home, Canadian Mulvany survived three-and-a-half hungry years in Changi Jail, Singapore. Suzanne wrote The Taste of Longing: Ethel Mulvany and Her Starving Prisoners of War Cookbook (2020). Next up was Sharing Food and Fun, but Not All the Recipe Ingredients with McGill English professor Nathalie Cooke, who examined the self-reliance of rural women, shared examples of how they overcame obstacles such as lack of ingredients (think war cake and mock apple pie), and included amusing stories of women keeping food knowledge to themselves. Nathalie and Fiona were co-editors of Catharine Parr Traill’s Female Emigrant’s Guide: Cooking with a Canadian Classic (2017).

Food on the Rural Canadian Home Front was our final panel, beginning with Samantha George’s Jam for Britain Campaign: Grassroots Initiative to National Campaign, which introduced us to the evolution of a wildly successful WWII campaign started by Canadian rural women to make jams for British families. Samantha is curator at Parkwood National Historic Site. Concluding CHC’s presentations were co-speakers Shirleyan English and Bonnie Sitter with Memories of Ontario Farmerettes. Retired journalist Shirleyan recounted her own happy experience as a 16-year-old agricultural worker—a farmerette—on a southwestern Ontario farm during WWII, while Bonnie, a historian and photographer, showed wonderful historic photographs of farmerettes working and socializing, with accompanying commentaries. Shirleyan and Bonnie authored Onion Skins and Peach Fuzz: Memories of Ontario Farmerettes (2019).

All nine presenters were pleased to participate in the Rural Women’s Studies Association conference and thank the organizers for including us. The CHC board is happy to announce that our speakers’ papers will be published in the autumn. Further information will be forthcoming. Look for it later in the year!
 

New Website: What Canada Ate

By Julia Armstrong

On May 13, the University of Guelph's McLaughlin Library hosted the Zoom launch of a website that provides access to almost 300 historic Canadian cookbooks from its Archival & Special Collections. Called What Canada Ate, the site is freely available to everyone; you don't have to be associated with the university to use it. The digital facsimiles to be explored range from domestic manuals and government publications to community and commercial cookbooks. In many cases, users can download and print PDF copies.

As Special Collections Librarian Melissa McAfee explained during the launch event, the objective of What Canada Ate is to make the holdings of the library's Canadian Cookbook Collection more accessible to the public. The repository is the largest of its kind in North America, with almost 20,000 cookbooks dating from the 17th century to the present.

Author and CHC board member Fiona Lucas was invited to talk briefly about how cookbooks are essential elements in the research and interpretation of culinary landscapes, during which she took us on a "historiographic sprint" through the Canadian cookbook and culinary field. As she noted, What Canada Ate will be an important resource for the ever-growing study of foodways.

Along with the digitized cookbooks, the site showcases student-curated virtual exhibits. Professor Rebecca Beausaert, who teaches a food history course, described her collaboration with Archival & Special Collections staff to provide experiential learning to undergraduates through opportunities to interact with primary sources. What Canada Ate is dedicated to the memory of distinguished cookbook author, culinary historian and food activist Anita Stewart (1947–2020). Anita was the founder of Food Day Canada and the first Food Laureate at the University of Guelph. Anita's son, chef Jeff Stewart, spoke admiringly of his mother's mission to celebrate the foods of Canada. Anita's own cookbooks and archives are part of the Canadian Cookbook Collection.
 

The Edible Future: Report

By Sylvia Lovegren

On Thursday, May 13, tickets holders listened to a lively discussion between Profs. Ian Mosby and Sarah Rotz, authors of the new book, Uncertain Harvest: The Future of Food on a Warming Planet. Mosby, a food historian, and Rotz, a social scientist who specializes in land and food systems, brought their specialties and keen insights to bear as they looked at our current food system—both in Canada and in the world—and talked about how we got where we are and, importantly, ways to improve food production and delivery.

They looked at a small Quebec farmer who runs a diversified market garden operation that incorporates animals and many different vegetable crops, who is able to make a profit while incurring little debt and operating an ecologically sustainable farm. This model was contrasted with the more typical modern farmer, who operates an enormous monocultural operation, dependent on high inputs of fertilizer, chemicals and more and more hi-tech and expensive machinery, often incurring high amounts of debt.

Mosby and Rotz agreed that governments and economies have been pushing farmers toward the second model, while the first model makes more sense both economically and ecologically ... but that the pressure has mostly been on the wrong side. The question then became how to encourage governments and farmers to adopt the smaller model. An equally lively Q&A period followed the discussion.

Registrants were given a coupon code for a generous 20% off the book’s purchase price.
 
You’re Invited!
On the 10th of every month, CHC board meetings are open to any member in good standing who'd like to meet other culinary historians, find out more about upcoming plans, have a say in decision-making, and participate in organizing our events and activities.

The meetings are held via Zoom. If you'd like to attend one, contact CHC president Carolyn Crawford at carolyn@culinaryhistorians.ca.
 

CHC member Mya Sangster's bumper crop.

May-June Cooking Challenge: Rhubarb
As mentioned above, we have moved back the deadline for our rhubarb challenge, which asks you to cook, bake or preserve something using rhubarb (extra points if you grow it yourself!). Those who post photos and comments with the hashtag #rhubarb on our Facebook page by midnight on June 25 will be featured in the July newsletter. 
Join the Culinary Historians of Canada!



The membership year runs from one annual general meeting (usually late September/early October) to the next. Download a membership form here and join us today! 

2. News and Opportunities



Taste Canada 2021 Submissions
Now in its 24th year, Taste Canada has announced the list of submissions for the 2021 Taste Canada Awards. Each year, Taste Canada presents awards to some of the best food and beverage authors in both official languages. The jury is comprised of volunteers from Canada’s culinary profession appointed by an independent selection committee. This year, 73 cookbooks were entered, including 47 in English-language categories and 26 in French-language categories, with authors represented from eight provinces.

Taste Canada will reveal the 2021 Shortlist of culinary titles on June 16. The shortlist will narrow the competition to a maximum of five entries per category. Taste Canada will hold its second virtual presentation of the 2021 awards at a gala in the early fall.
 

City of Toronto: Hungry for Comfort
Toronto History Museums have added new online content to their Hungry for Comfort program series, an annual exploration of culinary food stories from diverse cultural groups across Toronto. This year, to coincide with Asian Heritage Month, and Museums Month, Hungry for Comfort spotlights Toronto's Chinese communities and their significant contribution to the city's rich and diverse food culture.

Hungry for Comfort: Chinese Food, Diversity & Delights is a video series that includes conversations with members of the Chinese community as well as culinary and historical stories from renowned speakers and chefs, and cooking demonstrations that get to the heart of Chinese cuisine. For details, please www.toronto.ca/museums. The series features four themes:
  • From Chop Suey to Peking Duck: Chinese Food Up to the 1970s: Arlene Chan and Marjorie Chan dish on how the Chinese food scene, including little-known market gardens, has developed up to the early 1970s and the important role it played in building intercultural connections in Toronto. Joanna Liu will demonstrate how to make shrimp with lobster sauce, a popular recipe from her family's restaurant, Yueh Tung Restaurant, in Toronto's first Chinatown. Joanna and her sister Jeanette Liu will also reflect upon managing the restaurant.
  • Culinary Journey Through Toronto's Chinatown: Professor Chef Leo Chan shares stories about the explosion and diversification of Chinese food from the 1970s to today, and Professor Daniel Bender discusses how Scarborough has gained the reputation as a food capital of the world. A cooking demonstration by Wilson Chan, of Mandarin restaurants, features a popular dish that has endured decades of love in Toronto and around the globe Cantonese chow mein.
  • Authenticity of Chinese Food: A dash of sweetness from Ann Hui's stories about small-town Chinese restaurants and the families that run them and a pinch of salt from Sean Chen's Qing-dynasty gastronomic guide will be blended to taste, as Chef Wallace Wong moderates a discussion that explores authenticity. Eric Chong caps off the conversation with a cooking demonstration of char siu bao, a recipe from his restaurant R & D in Chinatown West.
  • Global and Local Perspectives on Chinese Food: Join a panel discussion with Tina Chiu, Lucia Huang and Roger Mooking to savour their unique perspectives about Chinese food and restaurants in Toronto. The panel will be moderated by Karon Liu. Cheuk Kwan will share a global perspective about Chinese food.
 
Summer Solstice Indigenous Festival
The Summer Solstice Indigenous Festival presents free Indigenous culinary workshops:
  • June 6: Discover Traditional Teas with Chef Paul Owl
  • June 6: Curried Caribou meal with Chef Trudy Metcalfe-Coe
  • June 13: Seared Rainbow Trout with Sweet Corn Succotash with Chef Joseph Shawana
  • June 20: Seared Venison Frenched Rack with Sweetgrass Sauce with Chef Billy Alexander
  • June 21: Homemade Fish Tacos with Hominy Corn Salsa with Chef Justine Deschenes
 
Historic Jewish Cuisine
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research presents an online course called A Seat at the Table: A Journey into Jewish Food, an exploration into the heart of Jewish food, with an emphasis on the Ashkenazi table. This course features hundreds of never-before-seen archival objects, lectures by leading scholars, and video demonstrations of favourite Jewish recipes by renowned chefs. The registration deadline is August 31.
 
Disrupting Dinner: African Spices
Studio ATAO and Feast Afrique present a series of cookbook discussions called Disrupting Dinner that focus on one BIPOC-authored (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) cookbook every three months. During three monthly meetings, participants spend about an hour cooking recipes from the book and a second hour exploring the book's larger themes.

The current book, In Bibi's Kitchen by Hawa Hassan and Julia Turshen, "presents 75 recipes and stories gathered from bibis (grandmothers) from eight African nations: South Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar, Comoros, Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia, and Eritrea. Most notably, these eight countries are at the backbone of the spice trade, many of them exporters of things like pepper and vanilla." The final live session, which starts at 3 p.m. PDT, will focus on "Breads, Grains, and Preserving Community" (June 12). Admission is $25 to $50.
 
Indigenous Chefs Series Continues
The University of Minnesota annual conference on Native American Nutrition presents Celebrating Indigenous Women Chefs, a free webinar series that highlights the culinary expertise of Indigenous women through live monthly cooking demonstrations. They take place from noon to 1:15 p.m. CST on Tuesdays: June 8 and July 13. Past sessions are posted to YouTube.
 
What’s Cooking? (Member News)
CHC MEMBERS: Please let us know what you're up to! We'll publish all suitable news items received at cadmus@interlog.com by the 25th of each month. (Please write your announcement directly into your email window, with no attachments except a photo. Be sure to include a web link for further information!)


You're invited to The Tastes of Summers Past, the Virtual ROAAr (Rare & special collections, Osler, Art and ARchives) Book Club, which takes place on Wednesday, June 16 from 4 to 5 p.m. EDT. This meeting features recipes from the Cookbook Collection at the Rare Books and Special Collections at the Osler Library of the History of Medicine at McGill University in Montreal. CHC lifetime member Julian Armstrong (author of Made In Quebec: A Culinary Journey and A Taste of Quebec), and CHC member Nathalie Cooke with Elis Ing will discuss the recipes and your experiences in cooking from historical sources. RSVP here for this free event.

As noted above, CHC members Chantal Véchambre, Gary Gillman, John Ota, Julia Armstrong, Carolyn Crawford, Suzanne Evans, Nathalie Cooke and Samantha George were among the presenters at the Rural Women’s Studies Association Triennial Conference in mid-May.

Several current and recent CHC members are among the authors whose books have been received for consideration by the 2021 Taste Canada judges: John Ota (The Kitchen: A Journey Through History in Search of the Perfect Design); Suzanne Evans (The Taste of Longing: Ethel Mulvany and Her Starving Prisoners of War Cookbook); Emily Richards (Best of Bridge 5-Ingredient Cooking: 125 Recipes for Fast & Easy Meals, with Sylvia Kong); Pat Crocker (Cooking with Cannabis: More than 100 Delicious Edibles), and Maria Depenweiller (For the Love of Buckwheat: From Appetizer to Dessert).

On Sunday, June 20 at 4 p.m. EDT, CHC board member Sarah Hood will offer her illustrated virtual lecture The Marmalade Mavens, about the fascinating rise and fall of the world's great marmalade makers for the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor. The talk, created for a presentation earlier this year to CHC, is partly based on research for her book Jam, Jelly and Marmalade: A Global History, launching this month (see review, below).

3. Destinations


Maud Lewis in front of her home: by Ron Cogswell, licensed under CC BY 2.0

The Maud Lewis Kitchen (Halifax, Nova Scotia)
by Jane Black

To say that renowned Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis lived in a tiny home is an understatement. The 3.8 by 4.1-metre home she and her husband Everett shared is so tiny that it fits inside the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, where it is now on display. Even better, one can tour the tiny home virtually.

The home, with its happy flowers, feels warm and inviting. Visitors can imagine how nice it would have been for Maud and Everett to sit down to a simple meal of fish stew on a cold and dreary Nova Scotian March morning surrounded by the bright and cheerful flowers Maud painted on the walls and most possessions. The gaiety of Maud’s interior decorating belies the nature of the cozy little one-room house as a murder scene and, by some accounts, a place of captivity: Maud and Everett’s lives were neither ideal nor cheerful.

While Maud experienced a financially secure childhood surrounded by music, art and family, the differences in her physicality coupled with her juvenile arthritis resulted in many absences from school. When she did attend, she was bullied and teased. She dropped out at the age of 14, but the actual grade she attained was either only Grade 3 or 5. She eventually fell in love with Emery Gordon Allen, who abandoned her after she became pregnant. Maud’s daughter Catherine was born in 1928 and promptly adopted. Maud was told she gave birth to a baby boy who died. Despite attempts by an adult Catherine to convince her otherwise and form a relationship, Maud would reiterate that her child had been a boy and had died.

Maud’s parents died in the 1930s within two years of each other. Finally, her brother sold the house Maud was living in and sent Maud to live in Digby with her aunt. Interestingly, it was at this time that Maud changed her middle name from Catherine to Kathleen. It was in Digby that she met and married Everett Lewis. Despite Everett being by all accounts an impossible man to live with, marriage provided social standing and respectability, as well as independence from her family. It also saved her from a life in the poor farm. The poor farms of Nova Scotia could best be described as jails with strict work programs. Not only the financially poor, but also people labelled as poor in terms of physical ability, mental wellness, or even morals (e.g. an unwed mother) could all find themselves imprisoned within a poor farm.

Thus, while modest, the Lewis home provided freedom and independence for the couple. Everett Lewis obtained the house, situated beside the Marshalltown Poor Farm, where he was born to a mother who was either an inmate or worker, before he met Maud. As a youth he was sent to work on farms in exchange for room and board. Eventually he became a fishmonger, harvesting seafood and selling it door-to-door. Living an extremely frugal life, he managed to save enough for a car and the small house. After his marriage to Maud, he gained employment at the Marshalltown Poor Farm until it closed in 1963.

The Lewis house has neither plumbing nor electricity (visit the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia site for images). Unfortunately the present wood stove, which also doubled as the heat source in the house, is not the original stove but a recreation. A short video in the virtual tour explains that the original was in such bad shape that it could not be saved, so a similar make and model was found and painted like the original.

The stove is surrounded by very crude shelves made from reclaimed wood. Bread boxes and a tea tin painted with bright flowers rest on one wall. Enamelware, some painted, provided a means for washing both clothes and body. Opposite the stove a calendar from a local business still rests on the wall. Throughout Canadian history, and even today, calendars from businesses provided the only art on kitchen walls in many homes. In contrast, the margins of the Lewis calendar provide some of the only blank space in the home.

Meals cooked on the stove were simple and made from local fare. The Lewis’s diet included meat from the rabbits Everett snared, seafood he harvested, and vegetables grown from a small garden behind the home. Blueberries and raspberries also grew in the vicinity and were likely also used to supplement their diet.

Maud was physically unable to assist with these tasks. Her contributions came from the small amount of money her paintings brought in which, along with Everett’s earnings from the poor house when he was working, allowed them to supplement their diet with store-bought provisions. Maud’s arthritis made it difficult to clean and cook shortly after her moving in with Everett, so he prepared the meals and cleaned the house for most of their lives.

After Maud’s death in 1970, Everett sold her remaining paintings including one that was painted on the walls of the home. In fact, he sold everything that reminded him of her, including the sympathy cards he received on her death. He also took to painting in a style akin to Maud’s, often including Maud in his paintings. In 1979, nine years after Maud’s passing, rumour had it that Everett had hidden a large amount of cash he had made from selling her paintings in a jar under a floor board. A young man broke in searching for the rumoured money, and in the process struggled with Everett. Everett died in the painted house, never having moved further than a few metres away from the poor farm where he was born.

Upon his death in 1979, there were marks from his chewing tobacco on the floor and the badly installed stove pipe had resulted in a buildup of soot throughout the painted house. In 1980, for $11 000, the house was sold to the Maud Lewis Painted House Society, which sought to preserve it. In 1984 the house was acquired by the Province of Nova Scotia, and eventually it was transferred to the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, where it was restored to a state more akin to that when Maud still lived.

Maud’s paintings on every part of the home brightened up a life that was full of struggle and pain. Today her paintings brighten up the homes and kitchens of others either as prints or through the mugs, tea cloths and other kitchen items that bear her art. Despite the joys and pleasures brought to Canadians through the food prepared on stoves; kitchens and appliances are generally devoid of the cheerful ornamentation that Maud added to hers. After viewing Maud’s house, I am struck by a desire to add some sort of ornamentation, even if just through the use of magnets, to my own stove.

4. Food for Thought

Have you missed a book review? You can read reviews from all our past issues online. If you are a CHC member who would like to contribute, please contact Elka Weinstein at elka.weinstein@utoronto.ca or Sarah Hood at sarah@culinaryhistorians.ca.

   
Jam, Jelly and Marmalade: A Global History by Sarah B. Hood (Reaktion Books: Edible, 2021). Reviewed by Elka Weinstein, pictured above.

Many titles from Reaktion Books' Edible series have been reviewed here, but we are particularly delighted to review this one because it is by our very own Sarah B. Hood, editor of this newsletter. Sarah is also the author of We Sure Can! How Jams and Pickles Are Reviving the Lure and Lore of Local Food (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2011) a cookbook about preserving and canning that grew out of Sarah’s blogging about recipes for preserving just about anything. As everyone reading this review will remember, we were treated to Sarah’s wonderful talk on this about-to-be-published book in early March. In that presentation she reminded us of the long history of canning in Canada and North America—from its earliest roots in Catherine Parr Traill’s The Female Emigrant’s Guide to wartime rations sent to soldiers through the Red Cross in WWII.

Beginning with the very earliest preserving traditions in Roman and Persian culinary history, Sarah draws on ancient manuscript descriptions of feasting in imperial households to illustrate how honey, sugar and spices were employed to keep the fruits’ colours and enhance their taste for the delectation of kings and their guests. She then moves to the Renaissance in Europe, where sugar became the preserving ingredient of choice, especially in Italy, Spain and Portugal, and England, where although sugar was still too expensive for the lower classes, the upper classes used it to make suckets and solid fruit pastes served at banquets in grand households.

The next chapter of the book treats with the 1600s, when sweet preserved fruits became ubiquitous all over Europe, and wealthy families began to grow fruit to preserve in their own households, turning it into syrups, jellies, pastes and marmalades made from apples, quinces, cherries, raspberries, oranges, lemons, gooseberries and plums. Sugar, of course, was being supplied in more and more abundance from British-owned New World slave plantations, and the 1700s to the 1800s saw the use of sugar rise appreciably in English and Scottish households as it became ubiquitous in both wealthy and poor households. This had partly to do with a shift in eating patterns as tea-drinking, accompanied by bread and jam, became the choice for both breakfast and a mid-afternoon pick-me-up. Jellies, new methods for keeping preserves in jars, and popular discourse about sweet fruit-based desserts are dealt with in this section as well.

As sugar became cheaper and more available to ordinary folks, its use in keeping fruit for later consumption also became the preserve of home cooks. Marmalades originating in Scotland—Robertson’s, Rose’s and Frank Cooper’s—eventually were all made in the same type of factory, but were originally made (according to their manufacturers) by the wives of greengrocers in an effort to preserve citrus before it spoiled.

Sarah’s discussion of the great jam factories of Victorian England and worker unrest are the focus of the next chapters of the book and the most interesting section (in my view). Many of the workers in those factories were young women who were in demand as factory workers. When they were exploited, as they were by several jam manufacturers during this period, they went on strike, and those strikes did result in reforms and better pay. Factories run by Hartley’s, Chivers & Sons, and Wilkins & Sons, in semi-rural surroundings, treated and paid their workers well.

International condiment empires and wartime preserving are the focus of the chapters about the 20th century. The rise of companies familiar to Canadian cooks, such as Shirriffs, Smuckers, Welch’s and E.D. Smith, began during the globalization of manufacturing, both before and after the Second World War, which also brought standardization to a broad range of industries. The need for foods that could be shipped overseas without spoiling and the emphasis on wartime rationing as a patriotic gesture spurred women (particularly Canadian women) to prodigious feats of canning and preserving. Jam for Britain by Canada’s Women’s Institutes produced 1,120,166 kg (2,469,545 lb) over the course of the war.

In the final chapter, Sarah covers the 21st century’s penchant for both novelty and health-conscious cooking. Sugar-free and reduced-sugar versions of the familiar preserves on the shelves of grocery stores began to become available, and jams were used more in baked goods, although still popular for breakfast. With the rise of the Internet, food blogs have become popular as people begin to try their hand at making their favourites (with help from professionals) at home. This trend has become particularly evident during the pandemic but of course this could not have been predicted when Hood began her research for this book.

All in all, this is a nice survey of the history of jam-making and preserves for the layperson. The limitations of a short book like this are, naturally, that a more in-depth look at the history of jam manufacturing and women’s work, as well the history of the sugar industry, could not be expanded on here, but the references for each chapter at the end of the book are useful and relevant. The recipes (also at the back) are selected to give a flavour of each time period.

Review Contributors
  • Elka Weinstein (CHC book review editor, Toronto)
  • Judy Corser (Delta, British Columbia)
  • Pam Fanjoy (Hillsburgh, Ontario)
  • Luisa Giacometti (Toronto)
  • Gary Gillman (Toronto)
  • Sher Hackwell (Vancouver)
  • Amy Lavender Harris (Toronto)
  • Sarah Hood (Toronto)
  • Frances Latham (Stratford, Ontario)
  • Ivy Lerner-Frank (Montreal)
  • Maya Love (London, Ontario)
  • Fiona Lucas (Toronto)
  • Jan Main (Toronto)
  • Lisette Mallet (Toronto)
  • Bennett McCardle (Toronto)
  • Dana McCauley (Toronto)
  • Dana Moran (Ajax, Ontario)
  • Valerie Sharp
  • Mary Lou Snow (Conception Bay, Newfoundland)
  • Meaghan Van Dyk (Abbotsford, British Columbia)

5. Events of Interest

Compiled by Jane Black, Kesia Kvill, Sarah Hood & Julia Armstrong

With a COVID third wave upon us, all bets are off as to which in-person experiences will be available this year. The following sites were open during parts of 2020, and may be admitting visitors in 2021, but check before turning up at the door!

6. International Conferences


Compiled by Kesia Kvill

2021

May 31 to June 4 (online)
SIXTH INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION ON FOOD AND DRINK STUDIES
Host: European Institute for Food History and Cultures

June 2 to 5 (Las Cruces, New Mexico)
THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY SOCIETY ANNUAL MEETING
Theme: Challenging Crops & Climate

June 9 to 15 (online)
JOINT ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE CANADIAN ASSOCIATION FOR FOOD STUDIES, SAFN, AFHVS AND ASFS
Theme: JUST FOOD: because it is never just food
Host: The Culinary Institute of America & New York University

June 10 to 12 (Archibald, Ohio) 
ASSOCIATION OF LIVING HISTORY, FARMS AND AGRICULTURAL MUSEUMS ANNUAL CONFERENCE
Theme: Looking Forward …The Next 50 Years
Host: ALHFAM
Note: Will be entirely virtual. Registration opens soon.
 
July 1 to 2 (Marburg, Germany)
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE “FOOD – MEDIA – SENSES”
Host: Philips-University Marburg and Virtual
 
July 9 to 11 (Oxford, England)
OXFORD FOOD SYMPOSIUM
Theme: Food and Imagination
Host: St. Catherine’s College OR Virtual
 
July 22 to 23 (Vienna, Austria)
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CANNED FOOD, HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT
Theme: Canned Food, History and Development
Host: International Research Conference Online

September 7 to 10 (Rome, Italy)
INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION FOR RESEARCH INTO EUROPEAN FOOD HISTORY
Theme: Eating on the Move (19th–21st Centuries)
Host: Roma Tre University

October 28 to 30 (Copenhagen, Denmark)
ELEVENTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON FOOD STUDIES
Theme: Making Sense From Taste: Quality, Context, Community
Host: Aarhus University
Note: Blended digital and in-person

2022
May 30 to June 1 (Dublin, Ireland)
DUBLIN GASTRONOMY SYMPOSIUM
Theme: Food and Movement
CFP: From March to October 2021
Across the far-flung regions of Canada, a lot is happening in the fields of food and history. This monthly digest is a forum for Canadian culinary historians and enthusiasts to tell each other about their many activities. This is a place for networking and conversation about Canadian culinary history happenings. Each month, Digestible Bits and Bites is shared with members of the Culinary Historians of Canada and other interested persons who ask to be on the distribution list. 
 
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