Exploring New Brunswick's culinary past, one recipe at a time
Fredericton woman collects old cookbooks and recreates old-fashioned meals and desserts
Shana Boudreau is passionate about cooking — and collecting the recipes she uses — from vintage cookbooks.
It's all part of a project the Fredericton woman started last year, where she prepares and shares her passion on her YouTube channel, Shana Shows You Stuff.
She said she buys the cookbooks at estate sales and on online.
"I really hope to preserve these recipes," she said. "I was really drawn to the vintage aspect and tying our history to the recipes. I decided I wanted to share them with the world."
For Boudreau, her love for creating in the kitchen began as a little girl in St. Stephen. Her great-grandmother introduced her to cooking on her old wood stove at the age of five.
"My favourite and most cherished memory is learning how to make scrambled eggs with my great-grandmother," she said. "It's pretty special to own that bit of history, and when I make scrambled eggs, I always think of my great-grandmother."
Boudreau said she's inspired by the stories behind the recipes, especially when they're handwritten.
Boudreau has collected cookbooks from all over the Maritimes, Toronto and a few from the United States.
The oldest one in her collection, Doctor Chase Recipes, by a medical doctor from Michigan, was published in 1862.
"On the inside cover is the owner's name and their address. And come to find out that person that originally owned this book lived two doors down from my husband's grandparents in St. Stephen ... so it was quite an interesting find," she said.
"So not only is this such a really cool book, it is actually owned by somebody that my husband's family remembers and knew."
Boudreau also owns some of the well-known Purity cookbooks, first published in 1932 by the Purity flour brand and passed down to her from her mother.
She said there are a few differences to get used to when using old recipes. Some of the techniques and measurements have changed over the years, to the point where you may not understand why a certain ingredient is called for.
"For instance, recipes that use potatoes often called for sulfur, and that was to keep the potato white. We wouldn't really use that today," she said.
And in the days before modern, temperature-controlled electric ovens, terms like moderate oven, slow oven and hot oven were used to indicate temperature ranges. And of course, all measurements were imperial, not metric,
Many of her cookbooks are handwritten with personal notes such as owners' names and locations.
"I want to take the recipes that your mom wrote, your grandma wrote, your sister, your brother — men cook, too — and take those and record them," she said.
"So when we make this historic recipe, it ties us to our grandmothers, we are tied to our great-great-grandmothers, we get that same sense of history, we get to taste what they tasted, we get to make their recipes," she said.
New Brunswick women often created cookbooks together to raise funds during wartime and to support their communities, such as the Victory Cookbook: Tried and Tested Recipes from 1942, created by the Women's Institute of Carleton County.
Cooking for an audience
On her YouTube channel, she uploads videos of herself recreating a recipe and sharing the story behind it. You'll see her making things like tomato soup cake and Russian meatloaf.
"The very first recipe that I posted was a pineapple cookie, and I have so many comments on there like, 'My grandma made these, I missed these from my childhood,'" she said.
She has collected more than a hundred handwritten recipes and 40 cookbooks since the project in October. She uses a spreadsheet to keep track of her collection and the handwritten cookbooks are transcribed into digital formats so people can access them.
She also started a website where she uploads printable, downloadable versions of the recipes so anyone can access them.
Boudreau believes that recreating and sharing these almost-forgotten recipes reminds people where they came from and who they are.
She hopes what she is doing with the vintage cookbooks can bring communities and people in New Brunswick together.
"People's hearts and souls are poured into their meals and their cooking," she said.
"I've got little pieces of people and history, and I get to be responsible to share what I've found."
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