The Linda Miron Distad Culinaria Collection, housed at the University of Alberta Libraries, currently consists of more than 3,000 food-related texts from around the world, spanning several centuries. Collecting Culinaria accompanies an exhibit at the Bruce Peel Special Collections Library featuring cookbooks and household guides from the collection, as well as other selected items from the Library's holdings. The catalogue highlights some of the collection's most intriguing texts and their themes, including manuscript cookbooks, dietetics and health, and celebrity chefs. Collecting Culinaria draws from and celebrates this vast and diverse trove of social, cultural, and gastronomic history.
Merrill Distad is Associate University Librarian for Research & Special Collections Services at the University of Alberta.
Caroline Lieffers is a Reference and Collections Assistant at the University of Alberta's John W. Scott Health Sciences Library.
"Collecting Culinaria is a tribute to an extraordinary trove of historic cookbooks collected by Linda Distad, a University of Alberta librarian who died in 2012. Distad had a mania for heritage recipes; her collection ran to more than 3,000 titles, including the first English-language cookbook published in Canada, The Cook Not Mad, circa 1830.... Recipes date from Roman times, but Culinaria credits an English homemaker, Isabella Beeton, as author of the 'culinary and household management touchstone' that started the whole ball rolling in 1859. Mrs. Beeton's Book Of Household Management ran to 1,112 pages of recipes, cleaning tips and advice.... Collecting Culinaria is spectacularly illustrated with photos and artwork." [Full review at http://bit.ly/1Li7qFE] -- Holly Doan -- Blacklock's Reporter, 20150214
"Collecting Culinaria offers a wealth of images and history from the collection which ranges from manuscript images to cookbooks centered on food and health to early compilers such as Isabella Beeton whose tips and recipes became household standards, and The Cook Not Mad, which became the first English cookbook to be published in Canada in 1830. This magnificent cookbook history is a top pick for any culinary reference holding..." -- California Bookwatch, 20150102
"Unique, impressive, and inherently fascinating, Collecting Culinaria is highly recommended to the attention of cookbook collection enthusiasts and would well serve as a template for other curators hosting similar large collections of cookbooks." Wisconsin Bookwatch, June 2015
"...the book functions as a tasting menu, offering readers tantalizing glimpses of the Collection's treasures, whetting appetites for a longer visit and closer scrutiny.... Pages reproduced from the manuscript cookbooks are particularly intriguing..." -- Nathalie Cooke -- Canadian Literature, Summer 2015
