Hall of Fame Award (Posthumous) | 2013

Born in 1808 in Saint-Antoine-de-la-Rivière-du-Loup, Mère Emélie Caron was brought up in a very devout Catholic family. She devoted her life to the church and is well-known for being one of the founders of the Sisters of Providence in Montreal in 1843. Within the organization, whose mandate was to help the less fortunate, she held the prestigious position of Superior General. In 1878, Caron authored Directions diverses données en 1878, which was an educational tool used to teach cooking. The cookbook contains a variety of recipes, many of which contain fish to align with Catholic practices. In typical nineteenth-century style, there are no lists of ingredients and specific measurements are often missing. The book is divided according to type of dish and a complementary index is available at the back. While many members of female religious orders wrote cookbooks, Directions diverses was clearly a popular one, as it was reprinted eight times before 1913.