Appears in
Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets

By Darra Goldstein

Published 2015

  • About

Canada, in its early history, was a country where sweets tended to be regional, dependent on local ingredients and the origins of new arrivals. By the end of the nineteenth century, the huge nation was largely settled, and the increasing availability of cookbooks influenced the range of sweets that make up what we now call dessert—cakes, small cakes and cookies, pastries, pies, tarts, and puddings. Most recently, new twentieth- and twenty-first-century technologies and the arrival of new Canadians from around the world have further expanded its ever-bountiful sweet table.