Newfoundland Pictorial Cookbook

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

This is a new art form: a coffee-table cookbook. The slim work contains
real recipes, complete with preparation directions and both imperial and
metric measurements. The how-to details, however, are less interesting
than the uniqueness of the dishes and the spectacular way they are
presented. Each recipe is inset into a glowing, full-color photo of a
characteristic Newfoundland scene. Dories, fog, rocks, slickers, scrub,
frame houses, salt water, and friendly faces are plentiful. The book’s
designer took full advantage of the large-page format, presenting each
of the colorful photos in either full-or double-plate size. This
approach gives tremendous impact to Hines’s top-quality work.

The recipe names read like a dictionary of all that’s special about
food on “The Rock”: moose stew, figgy duff, bakeapple pie, jiggs
dinner, squashberry jelly, spruce beer, brewis, flipper dinner, and so
on. Since most readers will not have access to key ingredients such as
cod tongues, moose and seal meat, bakeapples, or even partridgeberries,
the recipes are not especially practical. This, however, does nothing to
detract from their appeal.

Tourists, and Newfoundlanders who have moved off the island, will enjoy
this book as a beautiful souvenir. For others, it is a novel addition to
Canada’s culinary history.