A Century of Canadian Home Cooking: 1900 Through the '90s

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.

For any woman old enough to remember back even a few decades, this
Canadian-cooking history will be welcomed as the best ever published.
Historians have largely overlooked that occupation practised by nearly
all women throughout the century, in all parts of the country: food
preparation. Ferguson and Fraser fill that void with a book that is as
beautiful to look at as it is fun to read.

The structure of the contents is dynamic. For each decade, the authors
include an essay on food and cooking trends, equipment, and innovations;
sidebars on the nutritional focus of the era; quotes from food writers;
pictures of cookbooks of the times; a generous selection of
characteristic recipes; and explanations, interpretations, and
variations of those recipes. The whole is lavishly illustrated with
full-color photos, which feature the food-stylist’s art as well as the
china, table linens, and accessories for the decade.

The result is a social history that recognizes women and their endless
task of meal preparation. This is a history in which the passage of time
is marked not by elections but by the invention of the refrigerator, the
pressure cooker, and the microwave oven; not by the clash of armies but
by the invention of margarine and sugar rationing; not by trade disputes
but by the marketing of cake mixes and canned soup.

For a nostalgia trip, nothing beats browsing through the decades of
home cooking. Remember tuna casserole with chow mein noodles? Scotch
eggs? Blender breakfasts? Baked goat’s milk cheese? In total, there
are more than 400 recipes: our culinary heritage, waiting to be cooked
and enjoyed once more.