Tortiere: Why Christmas

[Said1]

I know, it's massed produced and can be eaten and bought 365 days a year, but what I want to know is: Why is it a Christmas Tradition? When did it start being associated with Christmas. I know it was served as meal after Christmas Mass, but who started doing this and why? I guess it was the Catholics - but why?

This is serious research! :lol:

 

[TenPenny]

Here in NB, we think of it as an Acadian tradition, to have tortiere on Christmas Eve. Usually a big family meal after the midnight mass.

 

[#juan]

The only place I've had Tortiere is in Quebec, in Winter. I never thought of it as a Christmas dish. I've just now read that it is traditionally a dish served after Christmas Eve mass. It is delicious when made mainly with pork.....Better than with beef.
That just about exhausts my knowledge about Tortiere....:smile:

 

[Said1]

I can't seem to find an answer to the Christmas question either. I"m going to move on, unless someone know.

What a stupid topic for a term paper! Actually, it turned out more interesting than I thought.

 

[karrie]

Tourtiere was historically the 'rich' dish that our families ate at Christmas. The spices, pastry, and pork needed to make it were a luxury. It wasn't that it was no good at other times, just that it was outside of the budget. Christmas was when people would spoil themselves.

 

[mabudon]

TOTAL shot in the dark- could it maybe be linked (in a time LONG passed, like 300+ years ago) to the solstice being some kind of time to maybe start slaughtering some of the winter fattened animals?? A kind of "okay things are on track we can proceed as normal" type of celebration??

Just a shot in the dark, I remember learning about it in french class but can't for the life of me recall the explanation...

Oh and when I still ate meat I found it especially delightful drowned in HP sauce

 

[Cliffy]

The way I heard it from a French girlfriend, was that in the early days of settlement (400 years ago) it was very cold and heating was difficult in stone houses or crude log cabins, and the fat in tortiere helped warm them up from the inside.

I found this to be true when I experimented with a vegetarian diet when living in the bush. When winter came I could not get warm no matter how much wood I burned until I started eating fatty hamburger meat. Then I was warm as toast with half the wood burned.

 

[petros]

If you are cold eat a some butter and you'll warm up in minutes. This is why inuit don't consider broccoli to be a good source of muk tuk.

 

[mabudon]

A Taste of Canada: Our Homegrown Cuisine | CBC Archives

I listened to the whole thing seeking a clue, but to no avail, besides the french guy claims it was originally made from "tourtes" which were easy to catch in winter by throwing seeds on the snow then netting them

 

[Said1]

I'm pretty sure i listened to that too, lots of sources claimed it was first made with tourtes (pigeon like bird) until it became extinct - 19th century. In the end I concluded that it was made with whatever was available, so it was modified from place to place. The idea is food ways and folklore, moreso than the real history. The use of food in social interaction - sharing and community......or something like that.

 

[mabudon]

I just wanted to make at least one other person sit through that- I'm a freakin vegetarian and for some reason I spent 30+ minutes learning about meat pies (that includes search and reading other stuff time on top of that broadcast)



I have no clue why it made me so curious, but it did

EDITED TO ADD- and for some reason I found it fascinating

 

[Cliffy]

I just wanted to make at least one other person sit through that- I'm a freakin vegetarian and for some reason I spent 30+ minutes learning about meat pies (that includes search and reading other stuff time on top of that broadcast)



I have no clue why it made me so curious, but it did

EDITED TO ADD- and for some reason I found it fascinating

Could it be that you are a closet meat eater?

 

[Said1]

I don't eat meat pie either and for some reason I found it really interesting. At least from the perspective I was researching it from.

 

[mabudon]

Could it be that you are a closet meat eater?

Heck no, even if I did eat meat, closet meat would be the LAST thing on the menu- if I HAD to ingest a part of a house I would concentrate on the carpet WEEEEEE!!!!!

And no, I don't regret looking it up, it's just a strange way to spend sunday night

 

[Cliffy]

Heck no, even if I did eat meat, closet meat would be the LAST thing on the menu- if I HAD to ingest a part of a house I would concentrate on the carpet WEEEEEE!!!!!

And no, I don't regret looking it up, it's just a strange way to spend sunday night

back in the sixties, my best friend was a pot dealer and he lost so much pot to his shag carpet that we threatened to roll it up and smoke it.

 

[#juan]

Just to upset all the vegetarians :lol: , Last night I made Tortiere. I used two pounds of lean ground pork and about a half pond of lean ground beef along with the potatoes, onions, celery, etc. It turned out great. The only problem is that with just the two of us, I had to freeze over half of it. It is not as nice frozen but better than having it four days in a row.:roll:

 

[#juan]

To anyone who might be tempted to make Tortiere using a lot of ground pork, keep in mind that from two pounds of pork you will get close to a cup of fat so you have to cook the fat out of the pork before you combine it with the other ingredients.

Cheers

 

[karrie]

Just to upset all the vegetarians :lol: , Last night I made Tortiere. I used two pounds of lean ground pork and about a half pond of lean ground beef along with the potatoes, onions, celery, etc. It turned out great. The only problem is that with just the two of us, I had to freeze over half of it. It is not as nice frozen but better than having it four days in a row.:roll:

We have ways of dealing with small Christmas gatherings and big tortiere recipes.

Make just enough individual tarts to feed the people coming, and then make meatballs with the remaining meat mixture and freeze those (since we don't use veggies of any sort in our tortiere). They make nice appetizers for unexpected company.

 

[DaSleeper]

Tourtiere was historically the 'rich' dish that our families ate at Christmas. The spices, pastry, and pork needed to make it were a luxury. It wasn't that it was no good at other times, just that it was outside of the budget. Christmas was when people would spoil themselves.

My best guess is that the "tourtiere" tradition started when freezers were not common and "ice houses" were more common on poor people's farms, so the big farm animals were generaly butchered in December (and usually at the proper phase of the moon for proper blood draining) because of the temperature...and that was when dishes such as "Tourtieres" "blood sausages" and "Six pâtes" came into being, so as not to waste anything......
That's why I think it was not a rich people's dish but it was more about the availability of the ingredients at the time......

 

[#juan]

We have ways of dealing with small Christmas gatherings and big tortiere recipes.

Make just enough individual tarts to feed the people coming, and then make meatballs with the remaining meat mixture and freeze those (since we don't use veggies of any sort in our tortiere). They make nice appetizers for unexpected company.

That is probably a great idea. We have six or eight little pyrex dishes that would hold a reasonable helping of Tortiere...Miniature little deep dish pie plates. Oh well, Next time...;-)