Food that Connects Us to Our Families' Pasts

There were about seven of us gathered around the dining room table learning the fine art of gnocchi making. We started off with forks and potato mashers but abandoned those tools and soon our fingers were sticky with dough. Flour was added to the bowl, then more flour and more. "Is this still too sticky?" we asked, anxious to get onto the next phase; shaping the little mounds of dough. Turns out the best way to shape each individual gnocco is by rolling it on a fork. The hands-on process of learning how to make this Italian food staple was fun and let us non-Italians in on a tradition that has been passed down through families.

Food is a way we connect with our past. Do you have family recipes that have been passed down through generations? Many of us do, or a least know enough about our ethnicities that we seek out their traditional traditional dishes. I have a few hand-written recipes that have been passed down to me. Unfortunately, I don't think they are traditional family recipes, just ones my Mum used from time to time. They also don't include things I remember her making when I was a child. One delightful (and probably stodgy) desert that she made was suet pudding. The best part was that it was sweetened with Lyles Golden Syrup. Unfortunately, that recipe isn't among the hand-written ones in my collection.

The Canadian Receipt Book gives the following instructions for making suet pudding:

"Shred a pound of suet; mix with a pound and a quarter of flour, two eggs beaten separately, a little salt, and as little milk as will make it. Boil four hours. It eats well next day, cut in slices and broiled. The outward fat of loin or necks of mutton finely shred, makes a more delicate pudding than suet."*

Not quite the recipe directions or measurements that I am used to and there is no mention of Golden Syrup. But the book is interesting none-the-less as there are other recipes and advertisements that give a taste of life in Ottawa in 1867 when the book was first published.

While The Canadian Receipt Book is a current reproduction, some libraries have the actual cookbooks which were produced at the time. When I was at the McLaughlin Library at the University of Guelph, some of the items I requested from their special collections were cookbooks. Those local fund raiser cookbooks can be a wealth of information about an area you are researching. I found familiar last names among those who donated recipes to Prize Recipes of Fenelon Falls which was produced in the 1970s or '80s as well as ads for possible family related businesses. Cookbooks can be a good way to find out more about female family members who don't appear in many records. 

Sources:

The Canadian Receipt Book. Rock Mill’s Press, Oakville, On 2018 *p8