Canadian food and cuisine consists of the cooking traditions and practices of Canada, with regional variances around the country. First Nations and Inuit have practiced their culinary traditions in what is now Canada for at least 15,000 years. The advent of European explorers and settlers, first on the east coast and then throughout the wider territories of New France, British North America and Canada, saw the melding of foreign recipes, cooking techniques, and ingredients with indigenous flora and fauna.Jacobs, H. (2009). Structural Elements in Canadian Cuisine. Cuizine, 2(1), 0–0. https://doi.org/10.7202/039510ar Modern Canadian cuisine has maintained this dedication to local ingredients and terroir, as exemplified in the naming of specific ingredients based on their locale, such as Malpeque oysters or Alberta beef. Accordingly, Canadian cuisine privileges the quality of ingredients and regionality, and may be broadly defined as a national tradition of "creole" culinary practices, based on the complex multicultural and geographically diverse nature of both historical and contemporary Canadian society.
Divisions within Canadian cuisine can be traced along regional lines and have a direct connection to the historical immigration patterns of each region or province. The earliest cuisines of Canada are based on Indigenous, English, Scottish and French roots. The traditional cuisines of both French- and English-Canada have evolved from those carried over to North America from France and the British Isles respectively, and from their adaptation to Indigenous customs, labour-intensive and/or mobile lifestyles, and hostile environmental conditions. French Canadian cuisine can also be divided into Québécois cuisine and Acadian cuisine. Regional cuisines have continued to develop with subsequent waves of immigration during the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, such as from Central Europe, Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, South Asia, East Asia, and the Caribbean. There are many culinary practices and dishes that can be either identified as particular to Canada, such as fish and brewis, peameal bacon, pot roast and meatloaf, or sharing an association with countries from which immigrants to Canada carried over their cuisine, such as fish and chips, roast beef, and bannock.
Definitions
Though certain dishes may be identified as "Canadian" due to the ingredients used or the origin of their inception, an overarching style of Canadian cuisine may be more difficult to define. Some commentators, such as former prime minister Joe Clark, believe Canadian cuisine to be a collage of dishes from a variety of cultures. Clark has been paraphrased to have noted that "Canada has a cuisine of cuisines. Not a stew pot, but a smorgasbord." Also published as "Canadian cuisine a smorgasbord of regional flavours" Canadian food culture writer and author Jennifer Cochrall-King has said that "there is no single definition of Canadian cuisine. It starts with ingredients that spring from the landscape and with traditional dishes steeped in the region's history and culture." Retrieved 26 April 2022. Fist Law Comic
While the immense size of Canada, and the diversity of its inhabitants, compounds the difficulty in identifying a monolithic Canadian culinary tradition, Hersch Jacobs acknowledges that the lack of a hegemonic definition does not preclude the existence of Canadian cuisine. Lenore Newman argues that there is a distinctly Canadian creole cuisine, and identifies five key properties that together define Canadian cuisine: its reliance on seasonality, multiculturalism, wild foods, regional dishes, and the privileging of ingredients over recipes. This adaptation, preparation, and emphasis on specific local ingredients is of particular note, and a common theme in Canadian food is the use of foreign recipes, introduced by immigrants and their descendants, that have been modified for use of local products. Tourtière, for example, is a Canadian meat pie of French origin that can be cooked with beef, pork or fish. Retrieved 26 April 2022. Back Roads The sections on regionality and national foods below illustrate this tradition of diversity and emphasis on local elements, such as dulse and lobster in the Maritimes, deer meats in the Northern Territories, salmon and crab in British Columbia, or maple syrup in Central Canada.
Indigenous food may be considered uniquely Canadian, and the influence of Métis culture can be considered to have played a particularly important role in the origin of a distinct Canadian cuisine. Foods such as bannock, moose, deer, bison, pemmican, maple taffy, and Métis stews, such as barley stew, are all either traditional Indigenous foods, or originate from Canada with roots in Indigenous cuisines, and are eaten throughout the country.
There are many foods of foreign origin that are eaten commonly and considered integrated constituents of Canadian cuisine. Pierogi (dumplings of Central and Eastern European origin) are an example, due to the large number of early Ukrainian and Polish immigrants, while the ubiquity of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding are an example of the heavy English influence. As much of Canadian cuisine is coloured by the adaptation and development of dishes brought over by European, and later Asian, settlers, there is a variety of noteworthy Canadian variations on pre-established templated food and drink, with their own nationally defined particularities, such as Canadian Cheddar cheese, whisky, bread, wine, bacon, and pancakes.
In general, much of what is considered to be traditional Canadian cuisine contains strong elements of richness, breads and starches, game meat, and often stews and soups. Certain culinary traditions in Canada, such as the frying of dough, which developed out of the country's voyaging and frontier culture, have seen to both the creation of distinct national foods and the flourishing of a broader national association with certain types of dishes. In the case of frying dough, for example, particular foods originating from Canada would include beavertails, apple fritters and toutons, whilst foods such as doughnuts, cronuts, bannock, bagels, and pancakes, though not physically originating from Canada, have nonetheless developed within a broader tradition of nationally recognized cuisine.
History
Canadian cuisine has been shaped by the historical and ongoing influences of Indigenous peoples, settlers and immigrants. Indigenous influences remain prevalent in Canada's contemporary food scene, alongside those of the three major immigrant groups of the 17th and 18th centuries: English, Scottish, and French. This diversity has been further expanded by subsequent waves of immigration in later centuries. Retrieved 26 April 2022. Back Roads
Indigenous
The traditional Indigenous cuisine of Canada is based on a mixture of wild game, foraged foods, and farmed agricultural products. Indigenous peoples are known to gather more than five-hundred plant species for food. They cultivate and forage a variety of plants, hunt a diversity of animals, and use various tools to boil, smoke/preserve and roast their food. Each region of Canada, with its own First Nations and Inuit, utilizes local resources and distinct preparation techniques for their cuisines.
Maple syrup was first collected and used by the Indigenous peoples of Eastern Canada and the north-eastern United States, and Canada remains the world's largest producer."Maple Syrup." Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. Accessed July 2011. Though the origin of maple syrup production is not clear, the earliest known syrups were made by repeatedly freezing the collected maple sap and removing the ice to concentrate the sugar in the remaining sap. Maple syrup is one of the most commonly consumed Canadian food of Indigenous origin.
Dried meat products such as and pemmican are commonly consumed by the Indigenous peoples of the plains. In particular, the former was a predecessor for North American-style beef jerky, with the processing methods adapted for beef.
In most of the Canadian West Coast and Pacific Northwest, Pacific salmon is an important food resource to the First Nations peoples, along with certain marine mammals. Salmon are consumed fresh during the spawning season, or smoked dry to create a jerky-like food that can be stored year-round. The latter food is commonly known and sold as "salmon jerky".
Whipped soapberry, known as (sk-HOO-shum, "Indian ice cream") in the Interior Salish languages of British Columbia, is consumed similarly to ice cream or as a cranberry-cocktail-like drink. It is known for being a kidney tonic, which are called agutak in Arctic Canada (with animal/fish fat).
In the Arctic, Inuit traditionally survived on a diet consisting of land and marine mammals, fish, and foraged plant products. Meats were consumed fresh, but also often prepared, cached, and allowed to ferment into igunaq or kiviak. These fermented meats have the consistency and smell of certain soft aged cheeses. Snacks such as muktuk, which consist of whale skin and blubber is eaten plain, though occasionally dipped in soy sauce. Chunks of muktuk are sliced with an ulu prior to or during consumption.
Fish are eaten boiled, fried, and prior to today's settlements, often in dried forms. The so-called "Eskimo potato", (Inuit: oak-kuk: Claytonia tuberosa)merriam-webster.com Retrieved June 21, 2011. and other "mousefoods", are some of the plants consumed in the Arctic.
Foods such as "bannock", popular with First Nations and Inuit, reflect the historic exchange of these cultures with European fur traders, who brought with them new ingredients and foods. Common contemporary consumption of bannock, powdered milk, and bologna by Indigenous Canadians reflects the legacy of Canadian colonialism in the prohibition of hunting and fishing, and the institutional food rations provided to Indian reserves. Due to similarities in treatment under colonialism, many Native American communities throughout the continent consume similar food items, with some emphasis on local ingredients.
North and West European
Settlers and traders from the British Isles account for the culinary influences of early English Canada in the Maritime provinces and Southern Ontario (Upper Canada). Cuisines found in Newfoundland and the Maritimes derive largely from British and Irish cooking, with a preference for salt-cured fish, beef, and pork. Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia also maintain strong British culinary traditions. The French settlers of New France, who would become the Canadiens and Acadians, account for much of the cuisine of southern Quebec (Lower Canada), Northeastern Ontario, and New Brunswick.