Poutine? Pizza? Nachos? Bannock? Beaver tails? Chicken pot pie? We’ve been stumped many times on our travels when curious people ask us: “What is typical Canadian food?”
Italy is famous for pasta and pizza; France has its foie gras, duck, creamy cheeses and baguettes; Vietnam is known for pho; China for bao and stir frys; Middle Eastern countries give us shawarma; India introduced us to curries; Mexico for tacos, enchiladas and mole sauces; Argentina for steaks, dulce de leche and mate.
But what’s typical for Canada? When you Google it, the results draw heavily on French-Canadian and Indigenous dishes. While we often eat many of those foods, it doesn’t take into account our family’s traditions. Where’s the chicken pot pie?
The latest queries came from two Argentinian students of English as a Foreign Language during recent lessons via Zoom. We had been in Argentina, volunteering as English teachers with our host Estela, in March 2020 and we’ve stayed in touch. We’ve had Zoom calls with Estela and her students, who value simply chatting with native English speakers. Her student Agostina asked us about typical Canadian food and I stumbled through my answer.
Then the question arose again during another Zoom lesson with Estela’s friend Celina and her students.
“What are the most common foods in Canada?” asked Lautaro.
“Canada is a country of many immigrants so we tend to eat a lot of foods that came from other countries,” I said, flailing about for a coherent answer. I listed Italy, China, Thailand, and India as countries that supply cuisine we often eat. Also, our particular ancestors came from Britain (mostly Scottish for me, plus English and Welsh for Bill) so we’ve inherited … what?… meat-and-potatoes dishes, chicken pot pie.
Bill described French dishes from Quebec, such as sugar pie, baked beans, and poutine. And I added that we’ve also borrowed foods such as smoked salmon from our Indigenous peoples. We concluded that Canada has a real mixture of food traditions.
But, with apologies to Lautaro and Agostina, I wasn’t happy with our answers. Since those English lessons, I’ve given the question more thought and research. It’s impossible to speak for all Canadians, but I’ve concluded that what our particular family eats comes now from four categories:
- Our British heritage. Neither Bill’s nor my family was rich; we descended from pioneers, farmers and the working class. Our traditions include meat-and-potatoes basic dishes like beef pot roast, beef stew, meat loaf, baked beans, roast chicken and turkey, chicken pot pie, Yorkshire pudding, butter tarts, pumpkin pie, fruitcake, bread pudding, creamed salmon on toast, cabbage salad, potato salad, and pancakes with maple syrup.
- French-Canadian dishes: tourtière, poutine, beaver tails, pea soup, smoked meat, Montreal-style bagels, maple taffy.
- Other immigrant cultures: pizza, pastas, curries, shawarma, pad thai, pho, empanadas, tacos, rice and beans, quesadillas.
- Indigenous cultures: wild berries (saskatoons, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries), maple syrup, smoked salmon (although salmon is a typical Scottish food as well), quail (a recent discovery for me in British Columbia), wild rice, pumpkin, corn, and bannock when we’re camping.
When our British forefathers settled in what was to become Canada, they brought traditions from their homeland and adapted them with foods available here. They hunted for deer and wild turkey, while also raising cows, chickens, pigs and sheep. They grew corn and pumpkins, picked berries and apples, harvested native nuts, tapped maple trees, fished for trout, salmon and other seafoods.
Maple taffy, baked beans, butter tarts and pea soup are considered traditional French-Canadian foods, but they are also traditional in both Bill’s and my family’s food heritage. That’s likely because Bill was born in Quebec, as was my grandmother, and so their parents absorbed those dishes into their family cuisine.
In April, we looked after our adult daughter Rachel for a week while she recovered from surgery. I asked what comfort food she would like, and among her choices was chicken pot pie – chicken stew with a biscuit topping. It struck me that when we want comfort food, we yearn for the foods we were served as children, and that often points to traditional dishes. For me, it’s chicken pot pie, macaroni and cheese, roast turkey, and baked beans. My mother made them for me, and I made them for my own children.
In 2002-2003, while travelling around the world with our children, we were volunteering on a citrus farm in New Zealand, living with a family. We were asked the inevitable question – What is typical Canadian food? – and my kids enthusiastically volunteered me to make chicken pot pie for dinner that night. When it came time to make the biscuit topping, I carefully surveyed the flour package to see if it contained baking powder, as flour often does in New Zealand. I thought it didn’t, but I was wrong. After adding baking powder, the topping puffed up about six inches high! My kids were thrilled with this massive offering.
In 2008-2009, we hosted a Spanish girl – Roxy – in our Ottawa home for a year while she learned English by going to the local high school. Her father and brother visited, the question arose, and I made chicken pot pie. Just last year, Roxy finally admitted her father thought our chicken pot pie was rather bland. I laughed because in the meantime we had been to Spain and eaten tapas, olives, jamon, octopus, bull’s tail and other delectables. Yes, I had to admit my beloved chicken pot pie was bland in comparison.
Among Rachel’s other comfort food choices was macaroni and cheese, and – surprise, surprise – aloo gobi and ratatouille. I realized that her comfort foods were also from her childhood, but her childhood had been different from mine. I had added ratatouille and aloo gobi to my repertoire when I wanted to get vegetables into my kids, and the French and Indian dishes had morphed into Rachel’s comfort foods.
So, after much consideration, I think I can better answer Agostina and Lautaro’s questions about typical Canadian food, at least for my family. As the generations roll on, we incorporate dishes from the people around us – Indigenous, immigrants, friends, and the families we marry into.
However, my answer will not be the same for everyone, depending on their particular heritage. What do you think? How would you answer “What is typical Canadian food?”
I love that there is no clear answer to this question. It just goes to show what a diverse and evolving country we are.
Yes, there are so many food heritage variations based on whose family married into which other family and where they came from, regionally across Canada, or from other countries. We (as Canadians) can’t be pigeon-holed!
Just a word from prairie settlers. My background was English and German. But my German grandparents never made cabbage rolls. My Mom ate venison and moose and fish, all hunted and fished in Saskatchewan, as well as beef and potatoes. No Yorkshire pudding anywhere. My Dad, the British kid with a Yankee birthday (July 4), just meat and potatoes and what you grew in the garden. And cabbage rolls. Lots of Hungarian and Ukrainian families. While we didn’t make it, we certainly enjoyed it. Growing up we made sausage – 100 pounds a year – and that’s a family recipe and love. It’s really hard to replace. The TRUE recipe that very few know unless they are from the prairie is puffed wheat cake. Yes, the breakfast cereal. Mom made it every other week during warm weather and it never lasted long. She rarely made it in the winter until my kids requested it on a Christmas trip. And the only people that don’t look at me as if I’m nuts are prairie kids (my age), a few from Nova Scotia, and a trucking cousin found it in rural Pennsylvania. Go figure.
Enjoy!
Puffed wheat cake?! How intriguing. You must share the recipe for that! I remember eating puffed wheat cereal as a kid. My grandfather called it “bugs” so that’s what we called it, as in “Yes, I’ll have bugs for breakfast.” We never thought that was weird at the time!
OMG Nathan absolutely loves puffed wheat cake! Although born in BC, his formative years were spent in Alberta. I had never heard of it before I met him and this is the first time I’ve ever seen anybody else speak of it. It’s super easy to make. Nathan has found a commercially prepared version at 7-eleven, of all places.
I am definitely going to have to try puffed wheat cake. Either make it myself or search out some at a 7-Eleven, although I can’t imagine finding it there!
An Ottawa friend sent me this link to a CBC interview yesterday:
Ottawa Morning with Robyn Bresnahan: Should poutine get a special designation status from the government?
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-100-ottawa-morning/clip/15844506-should-poutine-special-designation-status-government
Robyn interviews Sylvain Charlebois, author of the book ‘Poutine Nation’ and the Senior Director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University.
Interesting! Check it out!
While I was growing up in Montreal, money was pretty tight for our family of four living only on my Dad’s salary, as was typical in the 40s and 50s. We typically ate: (1) shepherd’s pie; (2) a lot of hot dogs or Spam (aka Prem, Klick, Kam, etc., made with mystery “meat” by-products?!!?); (3) beef, chicken, or pork with potatoes and peas, green or yellow beans, beets, or corn; (4) Kraft Dinner (=comfort food, with chopped up hot dogs and ketchup added to turn it into a posh gourmet meal!); (5) soups (Scotch Broth, beef vegetable, chicken [chicken noodle=comfort food]); (6) pork sausages or pork chops fried with thinly-sliced potatoes; (7) homemade beef stew and canned stews (beef vegetable, meat balls and gravy, and, especially, Irish, still my favourite – but you can’t buy it anywhere now as the Clark company seems to be out of business. So sad.); (8) cold cut meat sandwiches with tomato slices, lettuce, and processed cheese slices; (9) grilled cheese sandwiches (still a family favourite); and, on occasion, (10) take-out, usually limited to pizza, Chinese food, or battered fish n’ chips.
Somewhat varied, but pretty bland, eh? But we survived!
I think the bottom line is that, other than indigenous food (maple syrup; spruce, root, and birch beer; maize; pemmican; bannock; Hawaiian pizza – well, maybe not that last one, but I understand it might be unique to Canada but abhorred everywhere else by true pizza aficionados! ;-), Canada doesn’t really seem to have a unique culinary tradition, other than in its diversity. We have borrowed just about everything from other countries and cultures, especially from our parents’ or (great-?) grandparents’ countries. We are all immigrants here in Canada – even our aboriginal brothers and sisters who originally migrated here from Asia a few thousand years ago after the glacial sheet covering a good portion of the northern continent finally melted. And that’s a mere blip in the long history of humankind’s quest to find edible food to sustain ourselves. In fact, just maybe Canada is more of a true “melting pot” than our neighbours to the south claim to be!
Yes, we also ate all those foods you listed, with the exception of Spam (thank heavens!). I remember my mother making me jam sandwiches for lunch when she made peanut butter and jam for my siblings. I’m allergic to peanuts so could never have the PB&J that everyone else had. (Don’t worry — she also made us good sandwiches like egg salad, tuna, salmon, cheese etc. I think the jam was a treat.) However, I also remember being jealous of my friend Judy, whose mother made her sugar sandwiches! White sugar on white bread! As a kid, I thought Judy was sooo lucky. I cringe now at the thought of it. I wonder now how much of that was due to tight finances or just bad nutritional knowledge?
This begs the question…. how does the sugar not fall out when you go to eat it?
I believe it sticks to all the butter on the white bread. A nutritional powerhouse!
So thought-provoking Kathryn. Thank you.
Our family also originated in UK, also with ‘meat and potatoes.’ However, the Yorkshire would be served with gravy as a starter. This would fill the belly before the scarce beef was brought to the table.
Interesting use of Yorkshire pudding! It’s funny — my family never had Yorkshire pudding when I was growing up, although we did have roast beef. My love of Yorkshire began when I married Bill because his mother made it all the time. She taught me how. Perhaps that’s the difference between my Scottish background and the English side of Bill’s background?
So I am third generation with roots in farming Italy (North with fair skin and blond) and English near London. Our family food ranged from roast beef and mash and boiled potatoes to spaghetti, fish, chicken. Not spicey. Always served at the same time of day and as a family meal, i.e. we all ate together at the same time. Surprisingly my father did not like pizza so we only had that if he was away!
What an interesting mix of culinary heritage! Are you sure your father was Italian, if he didn’t like pizza??!! We also ate family meals together when I was growing up (although sometimes the time was adjusted for my Dad, who was a doctor and often late when he was on call). Bill and I continued the sit-down family meal every evening with our own kids because we understood that to be important bonding time.
If you are from the Atlantic provinces you might include lobster rolls, seafood chowder, fried clams and fiddleheads.
Yes, I thought of all those regional differences too, but didn’t think I had the space to get into it all. I love all those that you mentioned. Plus scallops and oysters!
So educational, entertaining and hunger-triggering, Kathryn. You’ve provided a new variety of yet-to-try temptations.
Thanks, Moe! Good to hear from you.