A Taste of Acadie

by Marielle Cormier-Boudreau

For A Taste of Acadie , Melvin Gallant and Marielle Cormier-Boudreau travelled all over Acadia, from the Gaspé Peninsula to Cape Breton, from the tip of Prince Edward Island to the Magdalen Islands, and around northern New Brunswick and southern Nova Scotia. They gathered the culinary secrets of traditional Acadian cooks while there was still time, and then they adapted more than 150 recipes for today's kitchens. First published in 1991, A Taste of Acadie , the popular English translation of the best-selling Cuisine traditionalle en Acadie , is available once again. The indigenous cuisine of Acadia is a distant relative of French home cooking, born of necessity and created from what was naturally available. Roast porcupine or seal-fat cookies may not be to every modern diner's taste, but the few recipes of this nature in A Taste of Acadie hint at the ingenuity of women who fed their families with what the land provided. Most of the recipes, however, use ingredients beloved of today's cooks. Here you'll find fricot, a wonder of the Acadian imagination, pot en pot, a traditional Sunday dinner sometimes called grosse soupe, and dozens of meat pies. For those with a sweet tooth, Gallant and Cormier-Boudreau include recipes that use maple syrup and fresh wild berries. A Taste of Acadie is traditional cooking at its best, suffusing contemporary kitchens with country aromas and down-home flavours. Decorated with evocative woodcuts by Michiel Oudemans, it is a pleasure to look at and a charming addition in its own right to contemporary country-style kitchens.

Genres: Food, Cookbooks

186 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

Reviews

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's something evocative about the food your grandmother cooked; you may not have enjoyed all of it in your childhood and you may not dare to eat it now, but when you become interested in your cultural roots, the old dishes gain flavor in your memories. I didn't learn to cook the old Acadian dishes from my memere, so I was delighted to find A Taste of Acadie while traveling in Prince Edward Island.

This fascinating book by Marielle Cormier-Boudreau and Melvin Gallant is much more than recipes. The authors researched the cooking (and culture) of the Acadian people of Maritime Canada: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. The Acadians settled in this area from mid-central France in the mid-1600's and were ousted and dispersed by the British a hundred years later, civilian casualties of war between France and England. They gradually resettled up and down the Eastern seaboard, and many who had been repatriated to France eventually came back. These hardy people lived a hardscrabble life of fishing, agriculture and animal husbandry in the unyielding climate, and their cooking reflected the ups and downs of their existence--as cooking always does.

The book is arranged in sections--soups, fish, shellfish, vegetables--and each section is prefaced with some general, grounding remarks and basic techniques. The recipes reflect the simple ingredients available, largely cod, potatoes, small game birds, and pork. Pork and pork fat were highly valued, and consequently, the authors note, "...pigs were raised with great care and were often a source of personal pride. Older generations of Acadians told us that a farmer's reputation rested on the thickness of the pork fat that his pigs produced."

Some of the recipes hold a distinct lack of appeal; for example blood sausage and "head cheese" made by simmering the meat off a pig's head and hocks. Yet these dishes were great delicacies to my father and uncles, when their mother indulged them with a cooking spree. The family favorite among the old "recettes" (recipes) was poutines rapees, baseball-sized dumplings of grated raw potato wrapped around chunks of salt pork and simmered in salted water.

There are more congenial recipes in the book by all means: the popular buckwheat pancakes (ployes), seafood fricots (chowder-like concoctions), dandelion wine, simple homemade bread, and the hearty desserts and puddings sweetened with apples, berries, molasses, honey and maple syrup. I was particularly interested in the Acadian version of pate a la viande (meat pie), since this was another family favorite from the older generation. Even though the Acadian heritage is strong throughout Maine, nowadays the Quebecois version of meat pie (tourtiere) holds sway in the area and though I make tourtiere every year, it somehow fails to fully satisfy my memory; this winter we'll have the meat pie of my childhood.

I'm not sure how many dishes I'll actually make from a cookbook that lists "lard or butter" as possible substitutes for salt pork. But there are a few things I wish I had cooked for my father with his "French-Canadian" palate, since my mother (who was Scotch-Irish) never would. I'm glad to have this beautifully-presented book on my shelf to browse through when I'm struck with an urge to explore my cultural heritage through cooking.

[Pamela Chavarie]

I was so excited when I got this book...LOVE reading the history on so many of the traditional Acadian meals I grew up eating and to learn why we eat what we eat. It definitely has come in handy during that last couple of weeks while we are forced to stay home during the COVID-19 pandemic...comfort foods always help!