The Joy of Cooking, with Gunpowder

Clara Benson would probably be displeased to know that her laboratory has been taken over by mindless mannequins sporting flirty cape sweaters and trendy stovepipe jeans. The only outward hint at the Toronto building’s former life is the name – Department of Household Science – still carved into solid Indiana limestone above the pillared entrance. Alas, the massive neoclassical building that once housed Benson’s pioneering food chemistry lab at the University of Toronto is now home to chic fashion retailer Club Monaco. But it will take more than a bunch of black velvet blazers to overshadow Benson’s achievements as one of Canada’s first female scientists.

Benson graduated from the University of Toronto with a doctorate in chemistry in 1903, one of the first two women to earn a Ph.D. from the school. Just the year before, the university had begun offering a degree in household science. Benson was appalled by the sexist overtones – she even signed a petition questioning the introduction of the course – but jobs were scarce and so she became a demonstrator of food chemistry. When the university formally established a Faculty of Household Science, Benson and the principal, Annie Laird, became the first women professors at the university. In 1912 the department moved into its new $500,000 digs on the bustling downtown corner of Bloor Street.

It was as luxurious inside as it was out. The interior was paneled with solid oak and the lab benches had marble tops. In between classes students enjoyed the building’s fitness facilities, including a gym and a swimming pool which are now part of the lower showroom of Club Monaco. One can almost sense the lady chemists in their bathing costumes amongst the crisp, modern styles of the urban professional.

But it wasn’t all leisure and relaxation for these bathing beauties. Though a curriculum replete with bed-making, sewing and cooking might sound laughable today, Benson’s science program was no cake walk. One lesson involved comparing the day’s leading baking powder brands: Magic, which survives today, and Egg-o, which doesn’t. Baking powder is a combination of acid and baking soda. When dissolved in water the two react to release carbon dioxide and make batter or dough rise. Benson’s students measured levels of tartaric acid, starch and carbon dioxide released, among other properties, to decide the winner (though history seems to have done the job well enough). Cereals, fruits, milk and spices weren’t exempt from scrutiny, either. Students turned their analytical powers to determining the grains’ moisture, protein, fiber, ash and vitamin content.

Benson’s notes on baking whole-meal bread read more like a scientific protocol than a recipe. She grumbled about how bran tends to cause excessive diastasis (enzymatic conversion of starch to sugar), and proclaimed the making of whole-meal bread in the summertime “an unsatisfactory operation.” She continued to express her disdain at having to make it at all: “It is to be deplored that for the sake of getting the nutriment supposed to be contained in the bran, a section of the public should demand a form of bread so unhealthy in other respects.” Thankfully, bread wasn’t all disappointments and letdowns. The first gluten-free variety was developed in her department for the treatment of celiac disease. Students also worked on making cloth from wheat.

Benson’s strict and studious approach to the science of food landed her a spot on the “American Men in Science” listing in the 1920s. But her work didn’t end with edibles. A shortage of technicians during World War I forced many young women out of university and into munitions factories. Benson set up a course that taught these women to measure the chemical properties of the explosives, using her food-chemistry methods. The research helped standardize the different stages of munitions production. Soldiers could rest assured their explosives were of the highest quality. Just like their whole-meal bread.

Benson retired a bachelorette in her hometown of Port Hope, Ontario, in 1945. Seventeen years later the Faculty of Household Science became the Faculty of Food Science. In another 16 years the faculty would be shut down entirely in the face of decreasing enrollment paired with desperately needed and costly lab upgrades. Many of its courses were by then duplicated in other University of Toronto departments.

Science-minded women today may scoff at a household science program, just like Benson herself once did. But food chemistry is big business. The Institute of Food Technologies approves of almost 50 North American undergraduate and graduate programs in food science. Molecular gastronomy – or haute cuisine with chemistry – was the buzz of several world-class chefs just a few years back. Food chemists are at the heart of every new processed food – from pudding and cookies to pizza and spreadable cheese. Without the groundbreaking work of scientists like Clara Benson none of it would be possible today. We can hope that Club Monaco, in remembrance of her, extends their search for “the perfect white shirt” to “the perfect white lab coat.”