A Cook Book Containing Recipes Tested and Proven by the Ukrainian Ladies’ Good Will Organization and Friends

This cookbook, published in four editions by the St. Josaphat’s Ladies’ Auxiliary, offers a glimpse into Edmonton’s Ukrainian community through the 1940s and early '50s (this edition, the third, is probably from 1954). It includes “An Appreciation,” which thanks recipe donors (whose names are also given after their culinary contributions) and advertisers; the book also lists individuals who made cash contributions. Among the advertisements, many of which endorsed Ukrainian-owned businesses, is a notice about welfare legislation, signalling a political priority of the period. While a Ukrainian audience was almost certainly intended for this book, the recipes also include, as Elizabeth Driver points out in Culinary Landmarks, dishes described as Czech, Slovakian, Hungarian, and Jewish (1031), probably the result of cultural comingling or intermarriage. But Ukrainian dishes remained an important part of ethnic identity (Zembrzycki 134–35). The “National Dishes” section includes a definition for “pyrohy”—surely the most popular of Ukrainian dishes in the Prairies—as “a sort of filled dumpling.” Meatless perogies were commonly eaten on Friday, a day of fasting for Ukrainian Catholics. This book also includes a section called “Ukrainian Christmas Eve Dinner” and includes recipes for each of that holiday’s twelve traditional meatless dishes. Ukrainian Christmas Eve, according to the Julian calendar, falls on January 6.

Ukrainian women founded the first women’s society in Alberta, called Zoria; this group raised significant funds for the construction of St. Josaphat’s Cathedral in downtown Edmonton. In 1944, Ukrainian women united nationally to found the Ukrainian Catholic Women’s League of Canada, a group that still exists today (Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy) The social engagement of these women is clear in pencil notes about “A.M. Registration,” a “Raffel,” and “Visit of Sick,” for example, hastily written on the book’s back pastedown. In 2002, St. Josaphat’s Cathedral published another cookbook, in celebration of its centennial.