Canadian cuisine consists of the cooking traditions and practices of Canada, with regional variances around the country. First Nations and Inuit have practiced their culinary traditions in what is now Canada for at least 15,000 years. The advent of European explorers and settlers, first on the east coast and then throughout the wider territories of New France, British North America and Canada, saw the melding of foreign recipes, cooking techniques, and ingredients with indigenous flora and fauna. Modern Canadian cuisine has maintained this dedication to local ingredients and terroir, as exemplified in the naming of specific ingredients based on their locale, such as Malpeque oysters or Alberta beef. Accordingly, Canadian cuisine privileges the quality of ingredients and regionality, and may be broadly defined as a national tradition of "creole" culinary practices, based on the complex multicultural and geographically diverse nature of both historical and contemporary Canadian society.
Pancake breakfast in Calgary
Sliced and prepared muktuk
Oatcakes were first brought to Atlantic Canada by Scottish Highlanders in 1773, and remain a staple of Halifax coffee shops.
Wild turkeys in Ottawa
Peameal bacon is a wet-cured, unsmoked back bacon made from trimmed lean boneless pork loin rolled in cornmeal. It is found mainly in Ontario. Toronto pork packer William Davies, who moved to Canada from England in 1854, is credited with its development.
Peameal bacon
Slices of peameal bacon frying in a pan
William Davies Company stall at St. Lawrence Market, c. 1911
Slices of peameal bacon served on a soft roll bun