Introduction Introduction

When CuiZine began in 2008, our primary goal was to provide a venue to showcase excellent scholarship on Canadian foodways and bring that scholarship to a broad reading public. At the heart of each issue are peer-reviewed articles that offer original insights into Canada's diverse food practices. CuiZine's commitment to open access has made this body of knowledge accessible to a remarkably wide audience. In 2009, the journal's first full year of production, more than 6,800 readers browsed our articles. By 2013, annual readership reached 12,260, drawing audiences from more than 114 countries, for a journal now indexed through CAB Abstracts and World Health Databases. Over the years, CuiZine developed a number of regular features popular with audiences and authors alike because they profile explorations of Canadian foods and food practices in a variety of formats and communication mediums. A"Petite Madeleine", for example, offers a reader one taste of a particular food memory. In CuiZine 5.1, Linda Morra shares one of her own family's culinary treasures -- a series of recipes recorded on remnants of curtain tape -- and the stories they tell of her grandmother's world. A series about "Iconic Canadian Foods", previously entitled "Foodstuff", profiles particular food items that have come to symbolize our distinctive food traditions. Here, Lenore Newman muses on the berries in the Canadian landscape and mythology. In Cuizine 4.2 we introduced a new series called "Cooking the Books", which invites contributors to look closely at a significant Canadian cookbook and test some of its recipes. In this issue, "Cooking the Books" focuses on three nineteenth century cookbooks, including La cuisinière canadienne, one of Canada's very first cookbooks. Yannick Portebois told us she had become "amoureuse du petit ouvrage" and we are sure that you will also be charmed by its treasures, thanks to Yannick's eloquent discussion and her detailed photographs. Next, we expect you will laugh along with Kathy Cohen as she candidly describes what she calls her "adventure" with Clever Cooking for Careful Cooks. "2 calf’s feet" her article begins, using the spelling and punctuation of the original, "You’ve got to be kidding!" Finally, Hallie Borstel focuses her own experiments with The Dominion Cook-Book on a cake with a fascinating name and culinary past: "Vanity Cake". We expect that you, too, will be tempted to take other historical cookbooks to your kitchen and look forward to hearing from you about the results. Do let us know how you fare by contacting us at cuizine.info (at) mcgill.ca. While we normally review books published very recently, we made an exception for a significant contribution to the Canadian culinary scene: a book with Anne Marie Lane Jonah and Chantal Véchambre as its primary authors, entitled French Taste in Atlantic Canada, 1604–1758, A Gastronomic History / Le goût français au Canada atlantique, 1604–1758, Une histoire gastronomique. Although the review by Fiona Lucas appears in the book review section, it could also be quite at home within the series "Cooking the Books". After all, Fiona brings a deep knowledge of historical cookery to her reading of this book written to commemorate the 300^th anniversary of the 1713 founding of Fortress Louisbourg. Just as we challenged contributors to cook from books, so too we invited talented photographer Rita Taylor to provide images as vivid as those conjured in our imaginations by Canadian writers. Rita responded with a series of photographs that are nothing short of breathtaking. In issue 4.1, we could almost hear the sharp intake of breath when you first see the rich reds of her canned tomatoes, inspired by Catharine Parr Traill's own historical cookbook, …