Kate Aitken's Canadian Cook Book

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

Kate Aitken was an Ontario farm wife whose reputation for cooking and
barnyard husbandry turned her into a local celebrity. The Canadian
government paid Aitken to tour Canada during the 1920s to lecture on how
to get the maximum yield out of hens and dairy cows and how to prepare
and preserve food. From the 1930s until her retirement in 1957, she had
her own CBC radio show, and becoming one of the most respected
broadcasters in Canada.

First published in 1945, Kate Aitken’s Canadian Cook Book was
intended to be a handy, inexpensive reference for homemakers. This
reissue gives us a fascinating window on mid-20th-century
British–American cooking. For example, fat is where it’s at. Aitken
uses rendered fat for virtually everything, from barbecue sauce (half a
cup) to Dutch Apple Pie (four tablespoons). Olive oil, on the other
hand, is nonexistent, even in leafy green salads. The book’s first
recipe, Cheese Bites, requires one cup of cheese, but Aitken does not
specify what kind—obviously, there was only one cheese in Canada in
1945—that orange stuff. Chinese, Indian, and Mexican fare had not yet
invaded the Canadian kitchen, and the only pasta dish in the book is
macaroni and the-cheese-with-no-name. One intriguing weight-watching tip
Aitken offers is to take a teaspoon of baking soda a day.

For any anglo-Canadian baby boomer, this book is an express ticket back
to grandma’s pantry. Keep a hanky ready as you relive the memories of
farmer-style Roast Chicken, Baked Ham, Potato Salad, Apple Crisp, and
Johnny Cake. The recipes might even be a tad challenging for today’s
novice cooks to follow, because Aitken generally assumes that her
readers already have some basic kitchen knowledge—but she does throw
out occasional hints to “brides.” If you are into WASP soul food,
this book is your bible.