Prologue

Hi to whomever stumbles upon this dark corner of the web. This blog is dedicated to my strange hodge-podge of interests, from zooarchaeology (my one true love), to historic cooking, with detours through other avenues of archaeology, history, and death positivity. You can call me Keira. I am an undergrad student in anthropology, and recent enthusiast of historic baking and cooking. 

I’ve been wanting to write about my experiences in my undergrad as well as exploring historic cooking (and other topics that take my fancy) for a while now, but never really had a good time. I’ve decided that there is no reason to put it off any longer as I have found the perfect recipe to start us off: Lemon Cake from “The female emigrant’s guide, and hints on Canadian housekeeping” by Mrs. C.P. Traill (1854)

I will admit, this recipe choice is a bit of a cop out, the instructions seem fairly straight forward on first glance, and the ingredients are commonplace today. I promise not all of my endeavours will be so tame, but I wanted to start off with something a little easier. 

Stay tuned for my first real post, in which I discuss this book, some culinary history, as well as my attempt to make a recipe from it.

(Pictured above left to right: first attempt making butter tarts; an heirloom red currant plant I acquired from Dundurn Castle NHS’s plant sale this past June; apple-carrot cake featuring drying chiles in the background)