Monday 10th December, 2007

Baking begins and ends with Christchurch’s Edmonds

Twenty-year-old Thomas Edmonds arrived in Lyttelton and set up grocer's shop in 1879. Business was sluggish so he experimented and made baking powder. The recipe was a resounding success, and the Edmond's Cookbook, first published in 1907, is New Zealand's best-selling book ever. Edmonds also left tremendous impression on Christchurch founding of the Edmonds Factory and Gardens in Ferry Road. This legacy is detailed in The architectural heritage of Christchurch.

An online version of the 1914 cookbook is available at the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre. It contains a simple recipe for Christmas cake – including brandy – and a Christmas plum pudding. The informative note to young people assures readers that “careful practice will bring success”.

Pavlova - a Kiwi classic

The pavlova is a Kiwi food icon, whose origins are hotly debated between Australia and New Zealand. The idea of a large cake sized meringue topped with fruit and cream appears in a 1926 cookbook – Futter’s Home Cookery for New Zealand - but it is simply called Meringue Cake. The famous Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova visited New Zealand in the same year. Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand gives a little background. See below for recipe links and tips.

Make someone happy this Christmas

Keen to make someone's Christmas? We’ve got $300 of supermarket vouchers to give away to six deserving local people. We want you to nominate someone and tell us why you want to help them. A $50 Pak'NSave voucher could be on its way to them with a thank you message from you!

Hurry - this competition closes at 5pm today, so Enter now!

Resource of the week:

Encyclopedia of Food and Culture.
Ed. Solomon H. Katz. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2003.
Presents 600 articles on food and its place in human culture and society, covering everything from agronomy to zucchini. Students, academics, and general researchers will find entries on everything from food preparation, distribution and storage to holidays and festivals, nutrition and health, and cultures and cuisines. Entries range from 250 to 10,000 words each and are supplemented by 400 photographs and illustrations, sidebars, recipes, menus, timelines, and a comprehensive index.

Access this with your library card number and PIN, or at your libraries.

We recommend: baking and summer cooking resources

Next week - get set for Christmas!

The decorations are going up all over the city and next week, in our second to last edition for 2007, we look at resources that explore Christmas and its traditions.