Grunt or slump or fudge is a steamed pudding or dumpling made with blueberries or huckleberries. But one can also enjoy in a Nova Scotia kitchen rhubarb grunt, raspberry grunt, and even apple grunt. In Folklore of Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia, the great Canadian folklorist Helen Creighton gives one definitive recipe: “Put berries in a pot, cover well with water and cook. Cool and add sugar. Drop baking powder dough in it.” Maritimers enjoy many variations, including one made from the little red cranberry-like fruits of foxberry or cowberry, Vaccinium vitis-idaea. Grunt is the toadish plorp! sound made as baking drives pockets of heated water vapour out of the gelatinous mass of the cooking berries. Grunt can be a main course as well as a dessert.

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