Welcome to the company kitchen! Midsummer, the North West Company held business meetings and entertained their clerks and trading partners. To celebrate this reunion, a professional chef and baker joined the numbers who traveled here in the summer months from Montreal. He would employ local Native women to prepare elaborate five course meals that included fancy roasts and baked goods, as well as popular beverages like syllabub and even fresh roasted coffee. Livestock such as cows, pigs, and chickens came aboard ships to create European-style fare. The menu also featured specialty dishes like haggis, blood pudding, and syllabub (a frothy cream and wine dessert popular at the time).
Look around to see kitchenware of the time, watch staff prepare food on the hearth or bake bread in an outdoor bread oven. While you’re there, learn what the voyageurs ate on their journey and see what Native goods made it on the menu.
Grand Portage National Monument
Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service