Hall of Fame Award (Posthumous) | 2015

Nellie Lyle Pattinson was born in Bowmanville, Ontario in 1879. She began her career as a teacher at the University of Toronto, where she had graduated from a household science course in 1907. In 1915, Pattinson was hired at the new Central Technical School in Toronto, becoming the school’s director of domestic science in 1920. She wrote the Canadian Cook Book in 1923, which became the first mass-produced recipe book in Canada and a popular home economics textbook across the country. Undergoing twenty printings between 1923 and 1951, Pattinson’s book not only helped to save its publisher, Ryerson Press, from insolvency, it also stimulated conversation around Canada’s national cuisine. Containing a plethora of recipes as well as nutritional, etiquette, and household management tips, the Canadian Cook Book played a significant role in the development of nutritional science and home economics across the country and in teaching and shaping culinary practices in the interwar and postwar periods.