Visit the Special Collections exhibit "Foodies and Flavours: Cookbooks as Historical Insight"

Foodies and Flavours exhibit

View "Foodies and Flavours: Cookbooks as Historical Insight," on display on the 3rd floor, W.A.C. Bennett Library

Recipes from personal archives laid on the table
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About the exhibit

The Foodies and Flavours exhibit features a selection of cookbooks and domestic manuals that provide insight into the evolution of household and kitchen practices and technologies.

You're invited to discover social, cultural, and material history through lenses of ingredient choices and preparation methods. 

From simple recipes and ingredients to refined components and complex techniques, cookbooks provide insight into lifestyles, cooking skills, and nutrition awareness.

The exhibit showcases views on homemaking from settlers' perspective and flavours of immigrating communities enriching cooking practices in Canada. 

It introduces historical local communities and food producers providing recipes to market their products, such as Rogers Sugar and British Columbia Food Growers' Association.

The display ranges from homemakers' personal tastes and choices, through industry recommendations and trends to modern chefs and award-winning design cookbooks.

What's on display

The exhibit includes:

 

A closer look: The Lady's Assistant

Page open to remarks on kitchen-poisonsThe Lady's Assistant (1805) cookbook provides description of food ingredients from basic to extravagant meat and fish proteins, side dishes, spices, sauces and desserts. 

While this cookbook provides advice on how to identify fresh quality components, the cooking instructions are directed at experienced cooks expected to be familiar with the basic methods. It does not provide instructions on cooking time or required oven temperatures!

The book also includes menu sets for various occasions, lists of seasonal ingredients for each month, warnings about kitchen poisons, as well as advice on management of livestock and gardens.

More images from the display

2 books on the table: Coyote Stories and Medicie Boy and other Cree Tales
Domestic manuals
four books on the table including stories of Iroquois, Sto:lo, and Cherokee
Modern cookbooks
Indigenous storytelling books
Flavour fusions cookbooks
Date(s)
January to April
Location
3rd floor, W.A.C. Bennett Library (SFU Burnaby)
Contact for further information
For further information please contact Special Collections and Rare Books at scrb@sfu.ca or Ewa Delanowski at ewa_delanowski@sfu.ca or visit Special Collections.