Marie Nightingale's Favourite Recipes: Over 350 'Keepers' from Nova Scotia's Favourite Food Editor

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.

In Nova Scotia, Marie Nightingale is associated with great,
unpretentious, “down-home” cooking. Her Out of Old Nova Scotia
Kitchens has been the bible of regional cooking for 20 years.

The 350 recipes in Favourite Recipes are drawn from the 1950s and
1960s, the age of ribbon loaf sandwiches, fondue pots, and daffodil
cake—short white gloves and a Jackie Kennedy haircut recommended. This
work will remind you of the days when beef stroganoff was served at
every dinner party, church socials always featured half a dozen types of
tea bread, and the main qualification for being a mother was the ability
to produce a pan of squares from the gleaming white electric oven.

Nightingale has captured the flavor of that age with practical recipes
for appetizers, beverages, soups, entrées, desserts, sauces, candy, and
preserves. Fish and seafood recipes appear in slightly greater numbers
than might be found in other general cookbooks, but otherwise the
collection is not particularly regional. The recipes call for basic
ingredients readily available anywhere in Canada. The directions are
clear and easy to follow—no elaborate preparation or processes
required. This is the “comfort food” handbook for the baby-boom
generation.