{"id":91039,"date":"2024-02-26T10:23:11","date_gmt":"2024-02-26T15:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=91039"},"modified":"2025-10-17T16:47:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T20:47:07","slug":"canadian-culinary-history-cooking-show","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/canadian-culinary-history-cooking-show\/","title":{"rendered":"A Recipe for Research: Carleton Student Creates Canadian Culinary History Cooking Show"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n A Recipe for Research: Carleton Student Creates Canadian Culinary History Cooking Show\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

From green corn patties to preserved apples, public history student Holly Benison is teaching people around the world how to cook like a 19th-century Canadian immigrant through her YouTube video series, “The Backwoods Kitchen<\/a>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half cooking show and half history lesson, the series is actually part of Benison’s master’s thesis project at Carleton University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of writing a traditional paper, she’s studying women’s work and culinary history in the mid-1800s by creating educational videos in which she recreates recipes and techniques from the 1854 book The Female Emigrant’s Guide<\/em> by Upper Canada author and naturalist Catharine Parr Trail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Carleton University student Holly Benison<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

With seven episodes uploaded and more to come, Benison is excited to be sharing her knowledge and passion for Canadian culinary history with a global audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Growing up, I always loved history and museums,” she recalls.<\/p>\n\n\n

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“But I found there’s not enough content, especially online, that looks at Canadian history in an educational and entertaining way.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

“I honestly love historical cooking more than I love modern cooking, because it’s a bit like solving a mystery. You’re not just following a recipe \u2013 you’re learning old culinary techniques and hunting down ingredients that aren’t used as much anymore.”<\/p>\n\n\n

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What is Public History?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Benison’s interest in Canadian culinary history was first sparked at a summer camp run by the Campbell House Museum in Toronto where she grew up when the museum’s director \u2013 culinary historian Liz Driver \u2013 took the teen campers to a farmers’ market and then taught them how to cook their entire lunch on a hearth fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I thought it was so cool,” says Benison, who ended up spending many summers working at Fort York \u2013 another Toronto heritage site \u2013 as a historical animator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later, with a bachelor of arts in history and a graduate certificate in museum management and curatorship in tow, Benison came to Carleton in pursuit of a degree in public history.<\/p>\n\n\n

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“I would define public history as the ways that historians, artists, writers and other creative people make history more accessible to more people,” she explains, referencing things like podcasts, interactive museum exhibits and Canadian Heritage Minutes as examples.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

She chose Carleton’s Department of History<\/a> based on its reputation for encouraging creative research projects like her own and credits the program and her advisors for helping her develop her research methodologies and thoughtfully integrate critical Indigenous perspectives into her thesis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Considering the relations settlers had with local Indigenous nations \u2013 for Catharine Parr Trail, it was the Michi Saagiig people of Nogojiwanong \u2013 helps me tell a more authentic history,” Benison explains. “It better reflects what was really happening at the time and what the author was learning from the Indigenous communities surrounding her.”<\/p>\n\n\n

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A Good Hearth is Hard to Find<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A self-taught filmmaker, Benison scripts, performs, shoots and edits her own videos. The only exception is costuming, where she enlisted her mom \u2013 a professional seamstress \u2013 for help. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the biggest challenges Benison faced was finding somewhere with a functioning hearth where she could recreate the recipes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n