A Taste of Acadie

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

This comprehensive cookbook opens with a well-written, detailed history
of Acadian cookery traditions. Often called “francophone
Maritimers,” Acadians are an agricultural and seafaring people who
live in scattered villages throughout the Maritimes. They retain their
own language and many of the culinary traditions of the seventeenth
century. This work is the result of interviews with 400 Acadian seniors;
the emphasis was on identifying traditional culinary practices that had
been passed from generation to generation.

The extensive recipe selection includes the expected—soups, fish,
meat and vegetable dishes, breads, desserts—plus a section on fricots,
the most typically Acadian of all foods. (A fricot is a hearty
chowder—a meal in a bowl.)

The recipe names are given in both French and English, but the
ingredients and methods are in English. Acadian terms, used generously
throughout, are always translated. In addition to the fricots, recipes
that will intrigue include All Saint’s Day Soup, roast porcupine,
winter vegetable pie, crкpes with snow, and meadowlark pot-en-pot.

This is both a practical cookbook full of everyday recipes feasible in
any part of Canada and an exploration of a unique part of our culinary
heritage.