Each month, we ask a member of faculty to tell us about one book that played an outsized role in making them who they are today. This month’s Words to Live By comes from King’s Librarian Tracy Lenfesty. Her choice goes back to delicious basics and loving memories.
What book have you chosen?
I am going out on a limb and choosing a book that is not an academic treatise, not poetry or drama and definitely not a novel. It is a reference book and instruction manual for the kitchen. I have chosen The Purity Flour Cookbook (second revision, January 1945), Purity Flour Mills Limited, Toronto, Canada.
How and when did you come across this book?
This book was kept in a drawer in a small dresser in the kitchen of the house I grew up in. Being the youngest of five children, I spent a lot of time in the kitchen with my mother, especially before I went to school. My two favourite places were the spice cupboard and the cookbook drawer. I was allowed to sit on the counter and take one spice jar down at a time, open the lid, smell the spice, then put it back carefully. My mother’s herbs and spices were very ordinary and, perhaps, a bit dull by today’s standards – parsley, thyme, savory, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves. Vanilla and almond extract and cocoa were kept here too and smelled delicious. The vinegar was less enticing. The cookbook drawer also contained the “good” tablecloth and napkins that were used only a few times a year.
What was it about the book that first stood out to you?
I was not a fluent reader at the time (being three or four years old) but I loved the pictures. There were gorgeous plates of cookies iced in pastel colours, a delicious looking tea bread and beautiful floral cups and saucers, and a fabulous roast beef and vegetables, all taken in black and white and coloured for printing. All the food looked delicious and very fancy indeed!
How did this book shape you?
As I grew older, I continued to help my mother in the kitchen, so I learned to cook the sort of food she made for us. This was the diet of meat and vegetables that was familiar to my parents. My father was wary of exotic things like garlic. Because we were a family of seven people and often with guests at Sunday dinner (the culinary highlight of the week), much of my mother’s time was spent thinking about and planning how to feed the crew that showed up at the kitchen table. Some of the food we grew ourselves. We had a good-sized fruit and vegetable garden. Food that was not eaten fresh was canned or frozen. Jam, jelly and pickles were stored in the cold room in our basement. The Purity Flour Cookbook had lots of good advice for preserving and planning healthy meals by the standards of the day. In the back of the book were some handwritten recipes, including my grandmother’s recipe for currant tarts (which are butter tarts with currants – I still think plain butter tarts or those with raisins are an abomination!) and her recipe for rhubarb relish. Although both these recipes exist in the Purity Flour Cookbook, they were obviously deemed inadequate by the family and Granny’s recipes remained the favourites.
What do you think it is about this book that made such an impact?
This book gave me the opportunity to ask my mother many questions about the recipes and ingredients (e.g., what is a yeast cake?) which led to questions about her life when she was given this book as a wedding present in 1949. This cookbook began many conversations! My mother told me what it was like to wash clothes (including diapers) on a washboard and how exciting it was for her to get a wringer washer; how in the early ’50s they had an icebox as refrigerators were scarce because factories were still retooling to make consumer products after years of war production. I learned how hard she worked without the help of the mod cons we all take for granted. These conversations inspired my interest in history and the role of women in the home. They inspired me to get my hands dirty in the garden and to cook from scratch with basic ingredients, which is very much de rigueur today. The book is not in good shape. The pages used most often are stained, several children have practiced colouring and writing on them (probably when my mother’s back was turned) and successful recipes have the word “good” or “v. good” in pencil beside them in my mother’s writing.
Have you reread this book? Does it resonate differently today than it did on first reading?
I no longer have my mother, but I have her cookbook and my memories. I still use this book! It sits on the shelf above my fridge with other cookbooks and a messy binder that contains recipes torn from newspapers and scribbled on the back of envelopes. I like to compare 1940s recipes with a later edition of this book published in 1967, and my Five Roses Cookbook from the 1980’s. Some things are surprising: I did not expect to find any mention of kale (no. 874) which seems new and trendy. This book also includes recipes for tongue (no. 549) and sweetbreads (no. 544) which might be poised to make a comeback. Salads and the relationship between cooking vegetables and their nutritional value appeared to be somewhat new ideas. Being a librarian, I appreciate the excellent table of contents, index, and the charts, tables and illustrations that show you how to knead bread, how to cook a turkey and which part of the animal different cuts of meat come from. This is more than a cookbook. This is a cooking manual and reference book for food in mid-20th-century Canada. It is a cultural artefact. It is also part of my family history.
Find out more about books King’s faculty have chosen and some of the surprising things the books gave them.
Banner photo: Priscilla Du Preez
