In the Gender, Sexuality, Feminist, and Social Justice Studies (GSFS) 401 Winter 2022 semester class on Food, Gender, and Environment taught by Dr. Alex Ketchum, students are analyzing the ways that food accessibility and environmental threats are gendered, raced, and classed within the global context. As part of the course, students visited McGill’s archives and special collections to have a hands on experience with historical cookbooks (more on that here: http://www.historicalcookingproject.com/2022/02/class-visit-2022.html). The Special Series of Student Posts is a collection of student reflections on what information we can glean from cookbooks.
The Magical Journey through History with Baking Powder
by Lisa Shin
The Magic Way is a cookbook made and published by E.W. Gillett Company Limited in 1924, Toronto, Canada. The version of the book I read was the 3rd edition. E.W. Gillett Company is a Canadian baking product company known for its Magic Baking Powder. Magic Baking Powder is still being sold widely in Canadian grocery stores with an almost identical packaging design from 100 years ago.
Illustration of E.W. Gillett Company Limited factory building. You can see the “Magic Baking Powder” sign on the top of the building.
People often put careful thoughts into constructing captivating covers that could summarize the overall content or emphasize the highlight of the book. This applies to The Magic Way cookbook as well. On the cover of The Magic Way, a white lady is holding a chocolate cake. This juxtaposes with other cookbooks that E.W. Gillett Company published. For instance, the cover of Magic Cook Book and Housekeepers Guide features chubby white men in a professional chef’s outfit. Interestingly, a woman in The Magic Way is holding a finished baking product (possibly made with Magic Baking Powder and the Magic Way recipe), whereas the cooks in Magic Cook Book are holding Magic Baking Powder tins as if they are endorsing the product. This reinforces the gendered norm that views men as professional chefs but women as amateur cooks in the cooking and baking industries (Shapiro 17). Women are expected to cook or bake within the domestic labour framework (i.e., unpaid housework). Consequently, this shapes women as the subject of receiving supposed benefits from the instructions given by the male professionals. This creates a hierarchical relationship between men and women as women’s skills and knowledge are devalued.
The cover of Magic Cook Book and Housekeepers Guide published by the same company.
The cookbook begins with a short introduction. In the beginning, they state the purpose of the book is to present “the idea of stimulating home baking” by making a “practical book” (E.W. Gillett Company 3). Additionally, they state that they included recipes for cakes for “all ordinary occasions” that can “easily [be] made even [...] with limited experience” (E.W. Gillett Company 3). Hence, one can suspect that the main target audience of the book is housewives based on the image on the cover and the stated goal of the book. Specifically, they are white (European-descendant) women who may not have professional knowledge of baking.
Also, on the introduction page, they state that “cake made with inferior ingredients is not only a waste but is injurious to the digestive organs as well” (E.W. Gillett Company 3). Through this statement, one can predict that Magic Baking Powder attempted to brand itself as a trustworthy high-quality product. In Western societies during the 1920s and before, there was skepticism around using new chemical products for cooking and baking. For example, an American baking powder company, Royal Baking Powder, used this skepticism as an advertising tactic to start the “baking powder war” by emphasizing their products with cream of tartar are “pure” while other branded products with alum are dangerous (Civitello 52). Similarly, Magic Baking Powder used anti-alum advertisements to emphasize the purity of its products. Indeed, in the introduction section, they stated that “[Magic Baking Powder] contains no alum or other injurious substitutes” (E.W. Gillett Company 4). E.W. Gillett Company also published advertisements that contain the same message, stating that food products with alum are even banned “in some countries” (E.W. Gillett Company). The emphasis on the purity of the food or the lack of pure ingredients in relation to health conditions (as shown by the repetitive usage of expressions like “injurious” to “digestive organs”) represent the prevalent ableism not only in the United States but also in Canada (E.W. Gillett Company 3). Indeed, ableism was so deeply embedded that the fear of being perceived as someone with a disability was used as an effective marketing tactic (Hall 179). It is interesting to consider these types of ableist marketing tactics still exist (and work effectively) even today.
Royal Baking Powder advertisement in 1899, attempting to distinguish themselves from other baking powder companies by emphasizing the harmfulness of alum.
An excerpt from the introduction section of The Magic Way.
Another interesting point mentioned in the introduction is the warning about the alterations to the recipe. They state that if the results are not what is expected, the baking powder should not be blamed as their products have been tested. The company chose to turn the possible blame on the customers to avoid losing trust in their products in case their recipes fail. Interestingly, women writing cookbooks in Canada were one of the few “avenues for public participation” at the time (Cooke et al. 3). Many housewives in Canada made “adaptations and annotations” on the cookbooks as a way of practicing their agency (Cooke et al. 3). Therefore, considering the target audience of the recipe is most likely undervalued housewives, this cookbook illustrates how the empowerment tactics used by women were dismissed.
The recipe and the baking instructions described in the cookbook are short and concise. Each recipe is composed of 4-5 short sentences. Since the target audience is non-professional bakers, this decision would have been done to maximize readability for a wider range of audiences who may have limited baking experience. This also could have been done to keep the compactness of the cookbook; the book itself was made small for portability. This makes it cheaper for the company to publish the book but also easier for the consumers to use in the kitchen as it takes up less space. This compactness could also explain the limited visual element of the cookbook (although, there are still few illustrations included, such as their Baking Powder Biscuits). This may challenge first-time bakers to follow their recipes since they may not know how the finished products are supposed to look like. The recipes included are for simple basic baked goods such as cookies, tea cake, and biscuits. These are all easily found and consumed in white Western households. Additionally, all recipes require Magic Baking Powder in the ingredients. This was an advertising method to encourage the customers to use Magic Baking Powder products to ensure a consistent sales rate.
The recipes use an imperial system (cups, teaspoons, tablespoons, etc.) which is a system of measurement still commonly used in 2022. However, there is no indication of specific temperature settings of the oven, most likely due to the technical limitations at the time. Instead, they use expressions like “bake in the moderate oven” or “bake about 25 minutes in a rather slow oven” (E.W. Gillett Company 24;10). This would make it hard to follow the recipe for people who are used to ovens with precise temperature settings in 2022. However, there are conversion charts that can be found online to assist the temperature setting.
Example of the recipes in the book. On the right, there is a cropped picture of the bread.
On the back cover, they have illustrations of their Magic Baking Powder product and Baking Powder Biscuits. It was actually not until I saw the Magic Baking Powder illustrations on the back that I realized this book was a commercial cookbook intended to advertise Magic Baking Powder. This also explains the name of the cookbook, which uses the word “magic,” inspired by their baking powder product name. On the illustration of the Magic Baking Powder, a part of the product catchphrase that says “the whitest, lightest…” is written. The catchphrase is now removed from Magic Baking Powder products. Such a catchphrase shows a glimpse of the colourism (which associates whiteness with positive entities) that was more prevalent and normalized in 1920s Canadian society.
Back of the cookbook featuring coloured illustrations of the Magic Baking Powder with the old catchphrase “makes the whitest, lightest, and most wholesome biscuits cakes etc.” featuring the baking powder biscuits.
Overall, this small commercial cookbook tells a lot about the historical background of Canadian society in the 1920s. For instance, it illustrates the post-World War I era’s new baking culture that emerged. As women entered the workforce due to the war, the shortening of time for household chores was needed. This led to the rise of new products such as chemical leaveners like baking powder which shortened and simplified the baking processes (Cooke et al. 46). The cookbook also illustrates the reinforcement of stereotypical gendered roles and devaluation of women’s labour, dismissal of women’s acts of resistance through cookbooks, the advertising tactics used at the time, the prevalence of colourism, ableism and much more.
References
Civitello, L. (2017). Chapter 4: The Advertising War Begins “Is the Bread That we Eat Poisoned?” 1876–1888. In Baking Powder Wars: The Cutthroat Food Fight that Revolutionized Cooking (Heartland Foodways).1st edition. University of Illinois Press. pp. 51-69.
Cooke, N., Mihalache, I. D., Ridolfo, E., & Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library Staff. (2018). Mixed Messages. Amsterdam University Press. pp. 1-77.
E.W. Gillett Company Limited. (1924). The Magic Way. Toronto: E.W. Gillett Company Limited. pp. 1-31.
E.W. Gillett Company Limited. Magic Baking Powder.
Hall, Kim Q. (2014). Toward a Queer Crip Feminist Politics of Food. philoSOPHIA 4(2). pp. 177-196.
Shapiro, L. (2004). Introduction. In Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950’s America. New York. pp. XVII-XXV.