Canadian Cookbooks: Changing Ideas about Cooking and Contamination, 1854–1898

Abstract

This study looks to Canadian household manuals, bookended by the watershed publications of Catharine Parr Traill in 1854 and Adelaide Hoodless in 1898, to identify what elements of the rapidly evolving sciences around nutrition, germs, and hygiene made their way to Canadian cooks. In doing so, it also sheds light on some of Canada’s early cookbooks, which have to date received deserved bibliographical attention but not yet close analytical scrutiny.