The butter tart’s first recipe, and the woman who sent it in

By Ines Keane

The oldest known printed recipe for a butter tart is two lines long. It sits on page 88 of a fundraising cookbook put together for a small hospital in Barrie, Ontario, under the heading “Filling for Tarts”, in the Pies section. The Simcoe County archives, which describe it, add that it gives almost no detail, because cooks of the day were expected to know their own oven temperatures and times.

That brevity is the first thing to understand. Everything people argue about, the raisins, the runniness, the nuts, is missing from the page.

The book

The cookbook is the Royal Victoria Cook Book, compiled by the Women’s Auxiliary to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie and published in 1900. The archive page says the Auxiliary sold it to raise money for patient comforts, that the recipes came from local women, and that they were chosen for ordinary home cooks. The hospital opened in June 1897 as Barrie General Hospital with 13 beds, and was renamed to mark Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.

The contributor, under three names

Sources do not agree on her name, and the disagreement is instructive.

Simcoe County Archives names the contributor Mrs. Malcolm MacLeod, identifies her as Mary Ethel (Cowie) MacLeod, about 1855 to 1915, and says the 1901 census lists her first name as Mary, with a birth date of 15 December 1855. It says she died in Toronto on 19 April 1915.
Canadian Food Focus, a food-information site, calls her Mrs. Malcolm MacLeod.

What was in it?

Here the sources part again. Canadian Food Focus says the recipe attributed to Mrs. MacLeod did not include raisins but currants, and lists “sugar, butter, eggs and currants” as the base. The Canadian Encyclopedia says the original recipes did not include raisins, and that currants are also used. The Simcoe archive page does not list ingredients at all.

Where it may have come from

Nobody claims to know. The Canadian Encyclopedia says the origins likely go back further than 1900 and offers one theory: that the filles du roi, about 800 young women sent from France to Québec between 1663 and 1673, adapted European recipes to local ingredients. It names sugar pie, a single-crust pie of flour, butter, salt, vanilla and cream, as a likely precursor. Canadian Food Focus tells the same story and says the use of maple syrup points to Québec. It says the tart then became a favourite in Ontario in the early twentieth century.

The raisin question

The Canadian Encyclopedia says the original recipes had no raisins, that nuts nudge the tart toward pecan pie, and that texture splits cooks too: some prefer a firm tart, others a runny one. A whipped-butter recipe or longer baking, it says, gives a firmer result. Canadian Food Focus asks plainly: “Raisins or no raisins? Nuts or no nuts?” and says no agreement is likely.

For a buyer or a baker, the useful point is that none of these is a standard. There is no protected recipe. Wikipedia says recipes vary according to the families baking them, and the firmness of the pastry and the consistency of the filling vary with them.

Regional notes

The Canadian Encyclopedia says Québec versions often use maple syrup in place of corn syrup, and that some Newfoundland and Labrador cooks add a dollop of tinned thick cream. It describes the dessert as one of the few pastries with a “genuinely Canadian origin”, quoting the Collins English Dictionary.

Dates in order

1663 to 1673 (Canadian Encyclopedia): the filles du roi arrive in New France.
June 1897 (Simcoe archives): Barrie hospital opens.
1900 (Simcoe archives, Wikipedia, Canadian Food Focus): the Royal Victoria Cook Book is published.

What kind of sources these are

An archive’s own web page, which is the nearest thing to a primary source here. A reference work. A food-information site. Wikipedia. None of them reproduces the 1900 recipe in full.

What we left out

Quantities, oven temperatures and baking times from any modern recipe. Names of bakeries. Festival attendance and sales counts, which differ between years. Anything about calories.

Quick answers

Where is the first printed butter tart recipe from? According to the Simcoe County Archives, it is from the Royal Victoria Cook Book, published in Barrie, Ontario, in 1900, on page 88 under “Filling for Tarts”.

Did the original butter tart have raisins? The Canadian Encyclopedia says the original recipes did not include raisins. Canadian Food Focus says the recipe attributed to Mrs. MacLeod used currants instead.

Roam first. Shop later.

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