This word named many kinds of food in Québec and Acadia. First I discuss only the modern Québec dish and provincial uses of the word. For details on Acadian use as in poutines râpées and poutine au pain, please see the Acadian poutine entry below.

Surprise! It began as an English word! Oops! Now pronounced [poo-TSIN] in Canadian French, poutine stems ultimately from the English word pudding.

Fascinatingly, the English word pudding has been borrowed at least four different times into French. Le pudding was in French print by 1678 to denote a pudding steamed in a cloth bag. This acquired several variants including le pouding and, in northern France, poudin.

Then again in 1753 French geologists borrowed an English phrase, pudding stone, that named a certain kind of conglomerate of pebbles embedded in a finer matrix. This went into French geology as la poudingue.

The third borrowing happened along the shores of the Mediterranean. Pudding had been borrowed into Italian by i nizzardi, natives of the city of Nice and surrounding territory.In the dialect of Nice, pudding became la poutina, but it named a mess of fried sardines and anchovies done in lemon and oil and used to accompany a soup or even to fill an omelette. In the south of France, maritime cooks borrowed the Italian word and named this fishy Italian fry poutine.

Finally, northern French people immigrating to North America, to become eventually Acadians, reborrowed pudding as poutine and began the evolution of its present pronunciation [poo-TSIN].

The most recent reincarnation or should we say re-empuddingment of poutine happened in Québec in the fall of 1957, and made poutine the most familiar Québec food word in North America, to the chagrin of Quebeckers proud of the gourmet delights of their provincial cookery.

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Why, they wonder, does poutine get all the fanfare while truly exquisite and scrumptious recipes like pintadine de L'Île d'Orléans aux groseilles do not receive the attention they deserve? Perhaps more people like junk food than appreciate guinea hen in a red currant sauce?

Today's poutine is a serving of thick-cut French fries, topped with fresh cheese curds and hot gravy poured on top of the curds before serving or, by some cooks, served in a little gravy dish on the side so the fries do not get soggy.

Two men claim to have invented this poutine in the fall of 1957 in a region of the province's Eastern Townships called Bois-Francs "hardwoods" just south of the St. Lawrence. In Warwick, Québec, near Victoriaville, halfway between Montréal and Québec City, Fernand Lachance, "le père de la poutine," and his wife Germaine operated the Café Ideal. One of the piliers du café or regulars was truck driver Eddy Lainesse. Now the region of Bois-Francs is dairy country, famous for its fresh cheese curds, and M. Lachance sold little boxes of the fresh curd in his eatery. One autumn day, Eddy Lainesse suggested mixing the cheese curds with fries. Et voilà! The gravy was not beef gravy at first, but Germaine Lachance's special recipe of brown sugar, ketchup, and a plop or two of Worchestershire sauce. After interviewing these three innovators for the October 9, 1997, edition of the Globe and Mail, reporter Tu Thanh Ha points out just how popular this poutine is in the province: "Burger King's decision to add it to the menu in 1992 generated an extra $2-million in curds business for Warwick's Fromagerie Côté."  

Wherever Quebeckers travel in numbers, from Alberta to New England, they like to see on distant menus some home dish; for some residents especially that mets à la maison is poutine. I've eaten it in a Manhattan restaurant, but the cheese curds had been stored in a refrigerator too long and were rubbery. Restaurants in Florida that cater to vacationing snowbirds from Québec actually fly in fresh curds by air freight.

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Poutines râpées are the famous Acadian potato dumplings made from two parts of grated raw potatoes squeezed dry in a cotton bag, and from one part plain mashed potatoes mixed together with the grated potatoes and formed into a ball about—as one Acadian cook told me—"the size of the fist of my petite tante Yvonne."

Poutine râpée,miam!miam! (Acadian for yum-yum!)

In parts of New Brunswick, a hole in the centre of each poutine is stuffed with diced salt pork. To cook these poutines, drop two or three into water at a rolling boil then simmer for two and a half hours. Poutines râpées may also be plunked into a gently bubbling fricot (stew).

 

Poutine en sac is another of the old European puddings steamed in a cloth bag, so many of which have made their way to Canada with names like:

• son-of-a-bitch-in-a-sack
• bugger-in-a-bag
• cloutie from Scotland
• figgy duff from Newfoundland.
• Also called poutine à la vapeur, the pudding is some variant of a lard-sugar-eggs-flour-milk-baking-powder mixture to which is added raisins and perhaps blueberries, apples, cranberries or whatever's in season. This doughy delight is mixed together to form a large ball, put in a cotton bag tied up with string, and placed on a wire mesh rack in a large pot with an inch of water. The steaming takes two hours. A double-bottomed pot may be used, or a double-boiler if you want to forego the bag, but since half the fun of a bagged pudding is the damn bag, why forego it? Poutine en sac can be served with sweet cream, brown-sugar sauce, or even slices of fried pork.

 

There are also Acadian poutines that resemble pies like poutine à la mélasse and bread puddings like poutine au pain.

 

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