{"id":424,"date":"2011-04-07T20:28:44","date_gmt":"2011-04-07T20:28:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historymuseum.ca\/nouvelle-france\/"},"modified":"2012-04-30T09:12:30","modified_gmt":"2012-04-30T13:12:30","slug":"foodways","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.historymuseum.ca\/virtual-museum-of-new-france\/daily-life\/foodways\/","title":{"rendered":"Foodways"},"content":{"rendered":"
Interior of a Butcher Shop, Adriaen van Ostade (1610-1684)<\/strong>
Pork was an important item in the diet of the settlers of New France for two main reasons. First of all, pigs feed on anything and do not require any special fodder or cereal crops, and second, the flesh and the offal are edible. Butchering and preparing meat (faire boucherie) also gave families and neighbours the chance to socialize.
Ostade, Adriaen van (1610-1684). Interior of a Butcher Shop. Oil on wood, 21 x 18 cm. MNR989. Photo: Franck Raux. Louvre, Paris, France. Photo Credit: R\u00e9union des Mus\u00e9es Nationaux \/ Art Resource, NY<\/div>\">\"Pork<\/a>

Interior of a Butcher Shop, Adriaen van Ostade (1610-1684)<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

What did the inhabitants of New France eat? This is a significant question, considering the importance of the culinary arts in French culture today, particularly since UNESCO recently classed French cuisine as a world heritage resource. Were the French of the New World just as adventurous about discovering Amerindian culinary culture as they were about exploring the continent\u2019s geography? We are well aware of the importance of many indigenous American vegetables in our daily fare, vegetables first cultivated by Aboriginal peoples: potatoes, corn, squash\u2026 But did the first colonists immediately embrace foods that were entirely new to them?<\/p>\n

The French, in fact, found an interest in local food resources as soon as they arrived in North America. They incorporated into their diet wild game, birds, and fish, as well as native edible plants, yet they returned to growing vegetables and cereal crops and raising European livestock as soon as they could. They could not do without bread, lard, beef, fare that even today occupies an important place in the menus of their descendants. Of the various social classes, the colonial elite appeared to be the most attached to French culinary traditions. Unlike most of the population, they had the means to buy imported products. That said, the exchange in culinary traditions did go both ways: while certain products were imported from the mother country, others were shipped in the opposite direction. We might wonder whether, thanks to the mix of Aboriginal and French foods, the inhabitants of New France didn\u2019t wind up with a better diet than the French in Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What did the inhabitants of New France eat? This is a significant question, considering the importance of the culinary arts in French culture today, particularly since UNESCO recently classed French cuisine as a world heritage resource. Were the French of the New World just as adventurous about discovering Amerindian culinary culture as they were about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":312,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.historymuseum.ca\/virtual-museum-of-new-france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/424"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.historymuseum.ca\/virtual-museum-of-new-france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.historymuseum.ca\/virtual-museum-of-new-france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.historymuseum.ca\/virtual-museum-of-new-france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.historymuseum.ca\/virtual-museum-of-new-france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424"}],"version-history":[{"count":100,"href":"https:\/\/www.historymuseum.ca\/virtual-museum-of-new-france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3215,"href":"https:\/\/www.historymuseum.ca\/virtual-museum-of-new-france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/424\/revisions\/3215"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.historymuseum.ca\/virtual-museum-of-new-france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.historymuseum.ca\/virtual-museum-of-new-france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}