The Canadian Receipt Book

<p>At the time of Canadian Confederation many Canadians were their own doctors cooks farmers veterinarians beekeepers and even rat catchers. This survival guide compiled fifteen decades ago is a fascinating glimpse into Canadian life before modern conveniences.</p><p>Melissa McAfee’s fascinating preface notes that “receipt” is an older term a set of instructions not only for cooking but also for medicine and food preservation. In <em>The Canadian Receipt Book</em> these “receipts” cover many tasks some of which may be hair-raising to the modern reader: removing worms from a cow’s bronchial tubes may have been as important in 1867 as knowing how to make English-style tea cakes. Recipes for lemon pudding and rice “snow-balls” are found in one chapter; remedies for pig leprosy and a cow’s “mad staggers” in another. <em>The Receipt Book</em> also contains business advertisements a dizzying array from the moderately recognizable (insurance and jewellery) to the more dubious (a “drug warehouse” advertising “cocoaine” and “liver syrup”).</p><p>Set to become a classic of early Canadian cooking and household management alongside Catherine Parr Trail this page-turning collection reminds Canadians of the long road we have travelled in 150 years.</p>