Rare Cookbook Exhibition at the Fisher Library

Who were Betty Bright, Sally Spark, and Penny Powers?

Why would a handwritten cookbook include a recipe for a cure for cancer? Who might use a recipe that calls for ‘one teaspoon of egg’ or ‘three sticks of macaroni’? What might someone actually be serving at a dinner party in 1830? Many fascinating questions are answered in the exhibition Mixed Messages: Making and Shaping Culinary Culture in Canada, which runs until August 17, 2018 at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto. The library mounted this major exhibition to celebrate the gift of a large collection of mostly Canadian cookbooks and culinary ephemera, donated by culinary historian and former librarian Mary Williamson. The collection spans more than 150 years and includes rare first editions of The Frugal Housewife’s Manual (the first English language cookbook to be compiled in Canada) and La Cuisiniére Canadienne, (the first French language cookbook to be written in Canada), as well as an intriguing selection of culinary
ephemera, early Canadian women’s periodicals and community cookbooks from most of the Canadian provinces.

Curators Irina Mihalache, Associate Professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Information, Nathalie Cooke, Professor and Associate Dean, McGill Library (Archives & Rare Collections), and Liz Ridolfo, Special Collections Projects Librarian at the Fisher Library worked together with Museum Studies graduate students and research assistants to tell some of the stories within this rich collection, and to explore who had agency and who did not in the creation of our shared culinary culture. Using material ranging from handwritten cookbooks to ration tokens to culinary objects such as an early 1900s curry bottle (with curry still inside), the curators examine how Canada’s food culture developed through a series of encounters and conversations, and look at the cultural changes that are represented through culinary material.

As with any exhibition, not everything fit into the limited space, and so undergraduate and graduate students were asked to engage with some of the cookbooks and magazines not included in the exhibition as part of their course work and research, and these additional stories are shared through oral histories, blog posts, and object stories presented on the exhibition blog and on iPads in the main gallery. Visitors are also given the chance to contribute to the guestbook – our version of a community cookbook – with their food memories, recipes, or thoughts on the exhibition. The cookbook collection will remain at the Fisher Library after the exhibition closes, and is accessible by any member of the public, but we hope you will have the chance to visit Mixed Messages before it closes on August 17, 2018!