Mashed potatoes, ground beef and corn. This isn't a shepherd's pie, but a Chinese pie — or pâté chinois! In the latest from LastSeenPodcast Amanda_Beland digs into the Chinese pie's origins ... which are actually French Canadian.
This content was originally created for audio. The transcript has been edited from our original script for clarity. Heads up that some elements are harder to translate to text.
Fabien: And then one of the character tried to recall the recipe of pâté chinois … she said ground beef, corn, potatoes, no potatoes, corn, ground beef …Amanda: That’s right, no recipes. Despite this national obsession, no one, I mean no one, knows its origins. Amanda: On the night I turned 33, I was staring at a computer screen — on it, was my family tree, documented for me by my partner Elio on Ancestry. I always had some curiosity in the back of my mind about my heritage, but never had any real facts about where I came from. That all changed that night.
Amanda: My grandparents, my mémère and pépère, were Franco-American. They lived in Manchester, New Hampshire, a once bustling mill town on the Merrimack River.Amanda: That’s them right there. This is taken from a home video, recorded when I was a baby. I also grew up in Manchester. So did my dad. My mom grew up in a neighboring town called Goffstown. We’re a part of the roughly two million people living in New England who claim French Canadian heritage.
Amanda: That’s how Chinese pie spreads: from generation to generation, mother to daughter. My mom got her recipe from my grandmother. And I got mine from my mom. It’s made in many restaurants, but not often. And when it is, it's mostly in Quebec. No other province in Canada claims pâté chinois like Quebecers do. And it’s mostly kept within families and neighbors. Documented through recipe cards, but more often, through word of mouth.
Jack Lepiarz: N'est-ce pas là un étrange paradoxe d'être à la fois tous unis dans le même amour gustatif et également solidaires dans l’ignorance de son histoire … Amanda: Here’s how the legend goes: pâté chinois was created during the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Paul: So the grand mystery to me is what the Chinese connection is, because in terms of ingredients, not so great. In terms of cultural history or culinary history, no connection either.
Amanda: Chow is a member of the group called Foundation to Commemorate the Chinese Railroad Workers in Canada. He’s also never heard of pâté chinois, or its connection to the railway. Binh Chow says of the more than 15,000 Chinese brought in to build the railroad, roughly a quarter died in its construction.
Still, why would a country’s workers with documented and persistent racism against the Chinese name a dish in their honor? It doesn't make sense at all. Couple that with the location of the Chinese workers, and the ingredients available to them, I think we can count this theory out. Thanks Gordon Lightfoot …
Seemed plausible, so I reached out to the Friends of China Maine group on Facebook to see if anyone knew of, or made, Chinese pie. Dozens of people responded. As I scrolled through the comments, it was clear there was a common theme.I made one today with corn, and that’s the only way we’ve ever made shepherd’s pie.
Annie: Cultures always collide, cultures always interact with each other, French Canadians always had connections with British Canadians, and British Canadians always had connections with Americans, so there would have always been this constant loop. Amanda: After the US enters the war, there's a push by a new federal agency called the United States Food Administration to change eating habits.
Amanda: People in the US and Canada were being encouraged to “Save the Wheat”. At the same time, both country’s views of food change considerably. The study of nutrition and what people are eating becomes important. Commercial canning is hitting its peak. And one of the canning industry's earliest hubs is in New England and it's mostly corn.
Paul Marion: In 1881, a politician labeled the Massachusetts French the “Chinese of the Eastern states” industrial invaders, not a stream of stable settlers … Life was tough for these immigrants. Men, women, and children worked long hours in the mills, where they earned very little money. My grandfather and his siblings all worked in shoe factories, doing various jobs, in Manchester.Sarah: We have a family story that my grandmother would buy one pound of meat a week and she had to stretch that for five individuals for five days. And by the end of the week, you have a bunch of leftovers and you just kind of throw them all together into a casserole.
Amanda: But here in New England, they were met with even stronger pressure to assimilate, viewed with skepticism in part because of their Roman Catholicism. Amanda: The phrase “Chinese of the Eastern States” is both racist against Franco-Americans and the Chinese. It draws on anti-Chinese rhetoric happening in the US, and as you’ll remember, in Canada, too at this time. A year after the 1881 report, the US would pass its ownThe phrase “Chinese of the Eastern States” also catches on beyond New England.
Despite all of this, immigration to New England from Quebec doesn’t slow down, in fact, it speeds up. And the growing community keeps fighting. Paul Marion: Attacked for loyalty to culture, the Canucks counterpunched, and the next government report was kinder. You can order pâté chinois in Montreal, one recipe the immigrants sent back …
Alright, so we’re going to put this in the oven. Let’s do bottom shelf and broiler at the end? Let’s do thirty minutes. It was produced by Amanda and myself, Nora Saks. Jeb Sharp is our story editor. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. Production help from my WBUR Podcasts teammates: Paul Vaitkus, Matt Reed, Dean Russell, Amory Sivertson, Megan Cattel, Quincy Walters, and Grace Tatter. Our digital producer is Megan Cattel. Ben Brock Johnson is our executive producer.
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