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Québécois Foodways

Québec

Regional

⚠ A DISTINCT FOOD CULTURE IN A DISTINCT LANGUAGE, and it does not think of itself as regional Canadian cooking. From New France: TOURTIÈRE, the meat pie whose filling and grind are argued over by region — the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean version is a deep-dish potato-and-cubed-meat thing properly called tourtière while the Montréal version is a shallow ground-pork pie, and each region considers the other wrong. Plus PÂTÉ CHINOIS; FÈVES AU LARD; SOUPE AUX POIS; CRETONS; RAGOÛT DE BOULETTES ET DE PATTES DE COCHON; CIPAILLE/sea pie; TARTE AU SUCRE; POUDING CHÔMEUR, invented in the Depression; and the SUGAR SHACK meal in spring. Then MONTRÉAL: the BAGEL, hand-rolled, honey-boiled and wood-fired and genuinely not a New York bagel; SMOKED MEAT; and a Jewish, Italian, Greek, Portuguese, Haitian, Lebanese and Vietnamese city. ⚠ AND POUTINE, which is rural Québécois in origin and is now the Canadian dish abroad.

Atlas — where and when

Where in the world

Communities and languages

  • Québécois community documented

Languages: French, English

What is recorded

  • Tourtière is recorded with documented regional variation: the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean form is a deep-dish preparation of cubed meat and potato, while the Montréal and lower St Lawrence form is a shallow ground-meat pie. Neither is recorded as definitive. Pouding chômeur is documented as originating during the Depression. documented

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

  • related to Ashkenazi Foodways documented

    The Montréal bagel and smoked meat come from the city’s Jewish community, largely of Eastern European origin.

  • related to French documented

    New France from 1608; the vocabulary, the pastry and the technique.

Recorded as relating to this foodway

  • related to Immigrant Foodways in New England documented

    ⚠ Hundreds of thousands of Québécois migrated to the New England mill towns from the 1860s, creating the Franco-American Petits Canadas. This is the single largest food connection between the two systems.

Regional cuisines

Recipes

No recipes are filed under this cuisine yet.