Canadian Pioneer Cookery — A Structural Analysis

Canadian Pioneer CookeryA Structural Analysis REBECCA SCHECHTER Introduction Levi-Strauss ends his article on ''The Culinary Triangle'' with a statement of hope that structural analysis can "discover for each specific case how the cooking of a society is a language in which it unconsciously translates its structure or else resigns itself, still unconsciously, to revealing its contradictions.''! The elements of the emerging social structure on the Canadian (particularly the Upper-Canadian) frontier which I will focus on in the following analysis of pioneer cooking methods are the distinctions between urban and rural life, between waste and conservation and between aristocrat and commoner. These elements, however, cannot be analyzed in isolation from the British and Native Indian traditions out of which they emerged and which they were, in a sense, an attempt to mediate or synthesize. While the task of tracing in detail the relation between these three food traditions is beyond the scope of this essay, I will nevertheless attempt as much as possible to analyze frontier cooking methods against the background of the British and Native food traditions. The time period I will be dealing with throughout the essay is roughly 1750-1850: the period which witnessed the two first major migrations into Upper Canada. In Section I, I will sketch the significant features of British and Native Canadian eating habits during this period, and will then briefly discuss the first and second major migratory waves from Britain into Upper Canada. Parts II and III will deal with the second, more permanent group of emigrants, analyzing in a detailed fashion several important aspects of pioneer cooking as they are related to structural developments in frontier society. The analysis in this paper is a more impressionistic than scientific or precise one, but seems worthwhile not only as an exercise in structural analysis but also insofar as it Journal ofCanadian Studies suggests some interesting possibilities for a further, more thorough study of Canadian society along similar, i.e., structural lines. I The Briton, the Native and the Pioneer The eating habits of the people in Great Britain underwent significant changes in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Perhaps the most notable of these changes was the introduction of vegetables into the daily diet of the entire population. Potatoes, cabbages and turnips originally cultivated for cattle fodder, became accepted as edible for people as well. The other two most striking changes in eating habits concerned the dramatic rise in the popularity of white bread and the concomitant extension of the wheat crop, and the increasing use of tea as a replacement for the malt ales and liquors that had been the predominant drink of the Britons.2 These overall changes, however, had different effects on the various classes of people in England. Where the poor country people lived primarily on bread, butter, cheese and cottage garden vegetables, with an occasional taste of meat or milk (and this in times of prosperity), the country gentlemen fared quite differently. An ordinary dinner menu for the country squire might easily have included three boiled chickens, a haunch of venison, ham, flour pudding, beans, gooseberries and apricots.3 The working classes in the towns, on the whole, ate better than their rural counterparts. Potatoes, bacon, bread and beans formed the basis of their diet, but there was a greater variety of choices of meats, and milk was more accessible (though often sour or otherwise contaminated). The wealthy town-folk ate quite as extravagantly as the upper classes in the country, often having their own game preserves and private vegetable and fruit gardens on the outskirts of the town. While winter time was hardest for everyone, due to the lack of adequate refrigeration and other preserving techniques, the rich maintained a varied diet, relying heavily on game meats, throughout the year. During this same period the natives of the new world were meeting the earliest British emigrants with a wholly different set of eating habits. The agricultural Indian tribes raised crops of corn, 3 beans and squash, supplementing this fare with nuts, wild fruits and berries, game and fish.4 Lacking iron pots, the native people had developed a variety of ways to prepare their food. Meat...