Jehane Benoît

Jehane Benoît, née Patenaude, food consultant, author, TV and radio commentator (b at Montréal 21 Mar 1904; d at Sutton, Qué 24 Nov 1987). Through her books and TV appearances on CBC's Take 30, Madame Benoît was a pioneer in explaining Canadian cuisine to Canadians. She studied at the Cordon Bleu in Paris and graduated as a food chemist from the Sorbonne, 1925. In Montréal, she began an English/French cooking school, Fumet de la Vieille France, attracting 8000 students over 4 years.

From 1935 to 1940 she operated The Salad Bar, one of the earliest Canadian restaurants to concentrate on vegetarian cuisine. Her 30 books, many of them bestsellers, delineate Canadian and Québécois cooking, and she was an early proponent of microwave cooking with the publication of Madame Benoît's Microwave Cook Book (1975). In 1985, she embarked on a 6-volume Encyclopedia of Microwave Cooking. In 1973, she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.