This cookbook is considered to be an important part of Canadian culinary history. It is both a cookbook and guide to home management. It is the first community cookbook to be published in Canada and the first cookbook published here as an attempt toward raising funds in support of a charity, in this case for Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children. The book was also the first here to introduce the idea of giving the contributor names with recipes. Many cookbooks published after this one copied its style. Due to difficulty with the publisher not being forthcoming with monies raised and controversy over the discovery that some of the material in the book was pirated from a similar book published in Chicago U.S.A., the Hospital parted ways with the publisher and ceased to be associated with the book in 1879. The book went on to be published for 50 years after its original release, by five different publishers, with very few changes to the material it contained
