Acadian cuisine () comprises the traditional dishes of the Acadian people.
Acadian cuisine is not very well known in Canada or internationally. It has much in common with Québécois cuisine because of its geographical proximity. The two often feature the same dishes, but the cuisine of Acadia puts more emphasis on seafood. Acadian cuisine has notably served as the base for Cajun cuisine because the Cajun are descendants of Acadians who were deported to Louisiana.[ "La Deportation des Acadiens" (consulted 14 January 2021)] It is also believed that Acadians are responsible for normalizing potato consumption in France—a vegetable the French people once considered poisonous.
History
In the 17th century, French colonists who settled on lands they named
Acadia adapted their 16th-century
French cuisine to incorporate the crops, seafood and animals that flourished in the region. Their descendants became the Acadian people and their ingenuity created Acadian cuisine.
After the English people conquered Acadia during the 18th century, they decided to deport the Acadians and take their settlements, which were often built on the most fertile earth in the colony. Most Acadians did not manage to escape the deportation. But, of those who did, most fled to the east and north of New Brunswick. As such, Acadian cuisine in the 18th century was refocused around what could be grown, hunted and fished in the less fertile lands of the East Coast of New Brunswick and the Upper St. John River Valley.
Ingredients
Acadian cuisine often features fish and seafood, especially
cod and
Atlantic herring, but also mackerel, berlicoco,
Lobster meat,
Crab meat, salmon,
mussels,
trout,
clams,
flounder, smelt and
scallops. Most fish is consumed fresh, but some are
boucané (smoked), marinated or salted.
The most commonly used meat is pork, followed by chicken and beef. As with the rest of North America, Turkey meat is commonly consumed during the holidays. Game like Venison, hares, ruffed grouse and moose is consumed regularly in some regions. Game will replace livestock meat if present and can be given as a gift. In some regions, for example Caraquet and the Magdalen Islands, more unusual game is or was caught, like Pinniped, bear and seagull.
The vegetables of Acadian cuisine are the potato, onion, carrot, turnip, legume, beet, squash and maize. These vegetables were popular because they were easily preserved for the winter in and jars. The fiddlehead fern was introduced to the Acadians by the indigenous Maliseet, Mi'kmaq and Penobscot peoples in the early 18th Century and remains a popular Acadian dish.
Popular fruits include blueberries, apples, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, plums, pears and cranberry.
Some ingredients like rice, molasses, dried raisins and brown sugar are part of Acadian cuisine because of historical commerce between Acadia and regions like the Antilles and Brazil. Maple sugar is also a popular sweetener, given the often-close familial ties between Quebec (the world's largest producer of maple sugar) and Acadia.
Dishes
Some examples of traditional Acadian dishes are:
-
Beurre de homard
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Bouilli acadien
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Bouillie à la viande salée
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Bouillon aux coques
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Chiard/ mioche—purée of potatoes, carrots and/or turnips.
-
Chow-chow— a North American pickled relish.
-
Sea-pie—sea-pie
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Coques frites—fried clams
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Coquille Saint-Jacques—a sea scallop dish.
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Cretons
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Fishcake—fishcake.
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Doigt-à-l'ail
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Fricot—a type of stew, consisting of potatoes, onions, and whatever meat was available, topped with dumplings.
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Morue bouillie avec patates et beurre fondu
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Pain au homard—a lobster and mayonnaise sandwich.
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Pâté au poisson—fish paste.
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Pâté chinois—mashed potatoes, ground beef and creamed corn.
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Pets de sœurs—" pastry filled with butter and brown sugar, rolled, sliced and baked.
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Ploye—pancake-like mix of buckwheat flour, wheat flour.
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Pouding chômeur—poor man's pudding.
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Poutine râpée—boiled potato dumpling with a pork filling.
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Poutine à trou—baked apple dumplings.
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Poutine au bleuet
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Ragoût—a thick soup.
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Rappie pie/ râpure—grated potatoes and chicken or salted pork.
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Soupe aux pois—Canadian pea soup.
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Tarte au sucre acadienne—Acadian sugar pie.
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Tchaude
[ "Tchaude" (consulted 11 February 2021)]—fish chowder.
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Tourtière: meat pie.
See also
Notes
- 1. When one speaks about Acadia before the Deportation of the Acadians, they are referring to the Acadia colony owned by France, which is today the The Maritimes of Canada. When one refers to Acadia in the present tense or after the Deportation of the Acadians, they are referring to the regions where Acadians live today. The Acadia of today is the north and east of New Brunswick, and some small parts of Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. Acadia, while not always recognized as such, can be considered a nation because of the language, culture, institutions, symbols, territory and history its people share.
- 2. Louisiana is not the only place outside of Canada where many people of Acadian descent can be found; there is also France, the Falkland Islands, the Antilles, New England and Texas.
- 3. A few Acadians also fled to sections of Cape Breton, western Nova Scotia and south Prince Edward Island. Because of their relative distance from New Brunswick, these communities experienced their own challenges and developed some unique dishes. Some also escaped to New France (now Québec) and assimilated to the Canadien population.
Bibliography
-
Marielle Cormier Boudreau and Melvin Gallant, La Cuisine traditionnelle en Acadie : historique des traditions et coutumes culinaires chez les Acadiens du Nouveau-Brunswick, de la Nouvelle-Écosse, de l'Île-du-Prince-Édouard et des Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Moncton, Éditions d'Acadie (réimpr. 1980, 1987) (1re éd. 1975), 181 p.
-
Ghislain Savoie, Histoire de la pomme de terre et autres tubercules connus dans l'ancienne Acadie, Les Cahiers, Société historique acadienne, vol. 42, no 1, March 2011, p. 4-25
