Acadian
Poutines Râpées — 1938 Version
With Onions, As Recorded by Aida Boyer McAnn
Aida Boyer McAnn — The New Brunswick Cook Book (1938)This is Poutines Râpées as it was written down for the first time in print — in Aida Boyer McAnn's 1938 New Brunswick Cook Book. The recipe includes sliced onions mixed into the salt pork filling, a detail absent from later versions, and captures the remarkable effort this dish demanded of Acadian households.
Ingredients
- Potatoes, raw (quantity as desired — roughly 3 raw potatoes per person)
- Onions, sliced very thin (as many as you wish)
- Salt pork, cut in small cubes (enough to fill each poutine)
- Salt, to taste
- Cooked mashed potato (1 cup per every 3 cups squeezed raw potato pulp)
- White flour, for rolling
To serve
- Sugar or molasses, or butter
Instructions
- Peel the potatoes and drop them immediately into cold water as you work, to prevent darkening.
- Slice the onions very thin and set aside. Cut the salt pork into small cubes. Season with salt. Combine the onion and pork cubes in a bowl — this is your filling.
- Working quickly, grate the raw potatoes. Place the grated potato into a clean cloth and squeeze firmly to extract all the starchy juice. Save the juice — it can be used in potato soup.
- In a large bowl, mix the squeezed potato pulp with cooked mashed potato in the proportion of 3 cups pulp to 1 cup mashed potato.
- Shape a ball of dough roughly the size of a large apple. Press a hollow into the centre and add a portion of the salt pork and onion filling. Close the dough firmly and reshape into a smooth ball.
- Roll each ball in white flour to firm the surface.
- Place a plate on the bottom of a large stew kettle. Fill the kettle about half full with boiling water. Gently lower the poutines onto the plate.
- Simmer — do not boil — for approximately 2 hours, or until the balls are tender when tested with a skewer.
- Remove carefully and serve hot with sugar or molasses, or with butter.
✦ Kitchen Notes
- "Before five in the morning." The 1938 cookbook is candid about what making Poutines Râpées actually cost — rising before dawn, enlisting family members to grate and squeeze before the potatoes could turn dark.
- The onion in the filling is the key difference from the acadian.org version. The onion softens during the long simmer and adds a subtle sweetness to the savoury pork.
- Save the starchy water. The 1938 recipe specifically instructs you to save the potato juice for potato soup — a perfect expression of the Acadian zero-waste kitchen.
- The plate on the bottom of the kettle prevents the dumplings from sticking — a charming piece of kitchen wisdom from the wood-stove era.
- The French text adds ciboulette (chives) alongside onion — a delicious variation. If chives are available, add them.