By Isla Quinn
Cold. Sweet. Three layers that cut clean.
Crumbs at the bottom, pale custard in the middle, a hard dark lid of chocolate on top. That is the Nanaimo bar, and the sources agree on that much. They stop agreeing the moment you ask where it came from.
The three layers
The City of Nanaimo’s own page gives a version of the recipe. The base is butter, sugar, cocoa, egg, graham wafer crumbs, almonds and coconut, pressed into a pan. The middle is butter, cream, vanilla custard powder and icing sugar, creamed together. The top is melted semi-sweet chocolate and butter, poured over and chilled.
Wikipedia says the bar needs no baking, and lists the base nuts as walnuts, almonds or pecans. So even the base is not fixed. A history network for British Columbia food compares three old recipes and finds they differ in the nuts, the coconut cut, the amount of sugar and the kind of custard powder. It also proposes an ideal ratio of equal base and custard layers, each seven sixteenths, with a thin top of one eighth. That is one writer’s proposal, not a standard.
The first recipe, and its plain name
The sources line up on this part.
- 1952: the Women’s Auxiliary of the Nanaimo Hospital Cookbook prints what the British Columbia food history network calls the first known recipe, labelled “chocolate square”. Wikipedia reports that the book printed three nearly identical recipes and marks the date as disputed. The Sidney Museum, a local museum, also calls it the first known printed recipe.
- 1953: the same recipe appears in Vancouver’s Edith Adams’ Cookbook under the name “Nanaimo Bar”. Wikipedia calls this the earliest confirmed printed use of the name and says a copy is held at the Nanaimo Museum.
So the dessert had no city on it for its first printing. A name arrived a year later, and in Vancouver, not in Nanaimo.
The other names
The history network adds that similar bars existed in Newfoundland or Ontario under names such as “New York slice”, “London fog bar” and “prayer bar”. It says no one has pinned down exactly when or where the bar was created and named.
Origin stories
Here the sources part.
- A cake. The history network says one suggestion is that the bar derives from an unbaked chocolate cake recipe printed in the Vancouver Sun in 1947 and again in 1948. Wikipedia says a food geographer argues the same.
- A women’s auxiliary. The network says some claim the bar existed by the late 1930s, invented by the Nanaimo hospital’s women’s auxiliary or a church auxiliary.
- Miners. The Sidney Museum lists two theories as unconfirmed: that wives packed the bars in lunches for miners, and that families in England sent similar bars to Nanaimo miners as early as the nineteenth century.
- Nanaimo itself. The city says the bar’s origin is elusive and claimed by many, but that it holds that the bar originated in Nanaimo. It invites anyone with an early-1950s cookbook, or an earlier one, to share it as documented proof.
We do not rank these. Our reading: the earliest printed evidence points to British Columbia in the early 1950s, but the sources do not prove that nothing earlier existed.
A contest
Both the city and the history network say the bar’s best recipe was chosen in a Nanaimo contest, and that it drew almost 100 entries over four weeks. The city says it was 1986 and run by the mayor and a shopping mall. The winning recipe is the one on the city’s website, according to the history network.
From local square to national symbol
The Sidney Museum says the bar grew in popularity after Vancouver’s Expo 86, where an official cookbook included it. Wikipedia agrees that Expo 86 included three of the caterer’s recipes and put the bar in front of the country.
Dates in order
- 1947 (history network): the unbaked chocolate cake recipe in the Vancouver Sun.
- 1952 (history network, Wikipedia, Sidney Museum): the “chocolate square” in the hospital cookbook.
- 1953 (Wikipedia, history network, Sidney Museum): the name “Nanaimo Bar” in Edith Adams’ Cookbook.
- 1986 (city and history network): the contest.
What kind of sources these are
A municipal website, which promotes the city’s claim. A museum’s food page. A history network for one province. Wikipedia. We read no original cookbook, so each date is a secondary report of a printed page.
What we left out
Quantities and method from any modern recipe. Names of living cooks, writers and scholars. Café names and where to buy one. Reader comments on the history network’s page, which the page itself flags as unconfirmed.
Quick answers
Where is the first printed Nanaimo bar recipe from? According to a British Columbia food history network, it is in the 1952 Women’s Auxiliary of the Nanaimo Hospital Cookbook, where it is labelled “chocolate square”.
When was it first called a Nanaimo bar? The Sidney Museum says the name “Nanaimo Bar” appears in Edith Adams’ Cookbook in 1953.
Do Nanaimo bars need baking? No. Wikipedia says the bar requires no baking. The City of Nanaimo’s recipe chills the top layer instead.
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Roam first. Shop later.