Taylor's Calendar Cook Book

Red Cross Pharmacy - 1904

Borrowed from an American almanac template and distributed to pharmacists across the continent, including Pingle’s in Medicine Hat and Tuthill’s in Toronto (Driver, Culinary 432), this book includes “Terms Used in French Menus Explained for the Benefit of the American Hostess,” astrological information, and a table of weights and measures for cooks not possessing a full complement of measuring cups or a kitchen scale. The link between pharmacists and cooks was not unusual: prior to the eighteenth century, foods were often understood in reference to the humoral system, and the suggestions of watermelon for epilepsy, figs for cancer, and peanuts for indigestion could easily have appeared in an earlier materia medica (e.g., Cullen) or medical text. Similarly, many pharmacists would carry spices and extracts, and some even mixed their own chemical leaveners (see “Improved,” for example).