View Your Cart | Checkout

The Canadian Receipt Book

The Canadian Receipt Book
by Melissa McAfee, editor

Publisher: Rock's Mills Press
Genre: history; Canadian history
Format: paperback; 210 pages
Price: $24.95

First published in 1867, the subtitle of The Canadian Receipt Book notes that it contains “over 500 receipts for the farmer and the housewife”. As explained in the preface by Melissa McAfee, the word “receipt” is an olden term meaning a set of instructions in a potion or medicine, or in cooking and preserving (from Anglo-French “receite”, c.1300). At the time of Confederation, farmers and housewives, of necessity, assumed many different roles, including veterinarian and doctor. The eclectic collection includes recipes for tea cakes, lemon pudding and rice snowballs, as well as remedies for pig leprosy and cow’s mad staggers. A classic of early Canadian cooking and household management, The Canadian Receipt Book is a fascinating glimpse of life in the nineteenth century.