Hall of Fame Award | 2015

In 1923, Nellie Lyle Pattinson published the Canadian Cook Book, which has been dubbed Canada’s first mass-produced cookbook. Popular among Canadian women and in domestic science courses, it was reprinted several times until Pattinson’s death in 1953. Helen Wattie and Elinor Donaldson Whyte, both graduates of the University of Toronto’s home economics program, were recruited to give the book a much-needed update after Pattinson’s death. The new version reflected how much Canada’s food culture had changed in thirty years. Notably, Wattie and Whyte’s 1953 edition incorporated international recipes, demonstrating Canada’s increasingly multicultural character. The 1961 reprint, shown here, included content relevant to Canadians in the early 1960s, such as advice for dieting, how to serve a buffet, and sample menus for entertaining. Today, the Canadian Cook Book remains one of the most celebrated recipe compilations, in large part due to the revisions completed by Wattie and Whyte.