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 Usborne Cookbook for Boys (2008) by Abigail Wheatly
by Gabrielle Piggott
Let me take you back to 2008. It was my fifth-grade Scholastic book fair and my parents had given me a generous fifteen dollars to spend on any book or trinket my ten-year-old heart desired. If you were a young bookworm like I was, then you can imagine the joy and anticipation that surrounded this glorious event every school year. The book fair was held for a few days in the gym, and we could visit it during our lunch hour or after school. However, what was most exciting was always the class visit on the first day of the book fair. Not only do you get to miss class for an hour, but you basically get to have a Chapters bookstore in your school gym. Truly a dream come true!
I entered the gym and started my initial scan from the left side to the right. It felt like a race against time, an hour was simply not long enough for me to pick the best book out of the hundreds that were there. Some years this book fair was a dud, and I was afraid that this year might be one of them. I remember thinking since when did this book fair get so expensive. I don’t know whose parents were giving them forty dollars to buy the latest Guinness Book of World Records, but mine surely were not. It quickly became apparent that there weren’t many appealing options within my price range, but then I found myself in the right corner of the gym, the food and cookbook section. This cookbook immediately caught my eye, The Usborne Cookbook for Boys (See Figure 1). It’s got a fun, busy, and colourful design style with illustrations accompanying every step of the recipes (See Figure 2). I checked the price, and it was a bargain at just eleven dollars, which meant I had some money left over to buy a snack on my way home. I had no intention of leaving with a cookbook that day but there I found myself ringing it up at the cash, quite satisfied with my purchase.
Fig. 1: Book cover, The Usborne
Fig. 2: Pizza recipe, The Usborne Cookbook for Boys, p. 20. Cookbook for Boys.
When I got home that night, I proudly showed my dad what I bought with the fifteen dollars he had given me that morning. I remember him being impressed that I chose this cookbook despite the title stating it is intended for boys and I, at the time, was a ten-year-old girl.
I don’t remember thinking twice about the title at all before buying it, I liked the book and that was that. Growing up my father prepared most of my meals from breakfast to dinner, so I never assumed that cooking was a gendered issue (little did I know), that was just what worked for my parents, and it was all I knew.
Looking at this cookbook now, in 2022, I can see the multitude of ways in which it is a little problematic. Not only does it claim to be exclusively for boys with the premise of simple recipes “even a boy could make,” but the cookbook also appropriates culturally specific foods with no mention of their origins. It was created by a team that was primarily comprised of women and I assume the intention when creating it was to encourage young boys to learn to cook and enjoy cooking. While I think that is a promising effort, I do not think this was the greatest way to go about it. However, other than the title this book is not overly gendered in terms of its design, style, and language, but its jambalaya and chilli con Carne recipes are far from authentic. I do not believe the aim was to curate a book of culturally accurate recipes. The book is intended for children and the recipes are common and simple which appealed to me when I was a kid that had just got permission to use the oven unsupervised. The recipes were recognizable to me, and I felt I could accomplish most of them with the ingredients I already had in the kitchen of my childhood home.
When I approached making a recipe from this cookbook now, as an adult, ironically, I did not know where to start. None of the recipes are bad, but as I have said, they tend to be simplistic, stripped down, and, honestly, a little basic. I am no professional chef, but I would like to think my cooking skills and palate have evolved to appreciate deeper, more complex flavour combinations than this cookbook seems to offer. Then I thought, what would my ten-year-old self do at this moment, and I immediately turned to my most-used recipe in the book, the guacamole (See Figure 3). After looking over the recipe I couldn’t help but think that my own personal guacamole (which I’ve perfected over time) was way better than the one in this book and I could not get myself to go through with it. Luckily, right underneath the guacamole was a recipe for tomato salsa that looked pretty good to me, so I went with that (Wheatly, 18). It was quick and easy just like I expected, but most of all it was delicious with the tacos I made that evening! After trying out this salsa recipe (See Figure 4), I must say I was satisfied but I would make a few adjustments. One thing I noticed about these recipes is that they often use measurements like three tomatoes or half a shallot which is understandable because those metrics are very easy for a child to follow, however, they lack quite a bit of accuracy. I ended up using two tomatoes instead of the three it calls for because I was only making enough for two people, and it just seemed like too many tomatoes (which I was right about). I had the perfect number of tomatoes but when I put in half a shallot it did not seem like enough, so I added a full one. Finally, I think it's best to add as much lime juice as you prefer because the juice from half a lime was nowhere near enough for me, so I added the juice from a whole lime and a bit of vinegar along with a sprinkle of salt and pepper. I ended up changing the whole recipe, I could not help myself!
Like any well-loved cookbook, this thing has been tattered and food-stained over the years. The Usborne Cookbook for Boys still sits on the shelf in the dining room of my childhood home and my parents still pull it out from time to time. None of the recipes can be considered gourmet whatsoever but they are relatively easy, accessible, and most importantly quite tasty. A quick Google search revealed that Usborne has published a bunch of children’s cookbooks throughout the years, many of which seem to have a similar style to this one. Perhaps I was not the only kid that found joy in the idea of buying their very own cookbook. At the end of the day, this cookbook will always be a little bit special to me because it is my first and helped solidify my love for food and cooking as a child and into adulthood.