poutine

noun

pou·tine pü-ˈtēn

chiefly Canada

: a dish of French fries covered with brown gravy and cheese curds

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Although the earliest evidence of the word poutine in an English publication is from 1982, historical accounts of the dish itself date to several decades earlier when someone had the brilliant idea to add rural Quebec's much-loved fresh cheese curds to (also much-loved) French fries. Whether the gravy came a few years later or was present ab ovo is disputed. Also unclear is the origin of the word by which the dish is known. Some assert that poutine is related to the English word pudding, but a more popular etymology is that it's from a Quebecois slang word meaning "mess." The dish has in recent years been making inroads on American menus.

Examples of poutine in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

The poutine took almost 15% of the votes in the poll. —

Molly Davis, The Tennessean, 8 July 2024 Afterward, enjoy Season’s Eating such as warm strudel, piping hot poutine, potato pancakes and more including holiday beverages. —

Roger Sands, Forbes, 6 Dec. 2024 Then, have dinner on-site at the Hearth & Candle, or just around the corner at Lot Six, featuring killer local beers and Korean-style karaage chicken clubs, banh mi, and a tater tot poutine. —

Corey Seymour, Vogue, 14 Oct. 2024 Try the different types of poutine then vote for your favorite using a QR code. —

Kylie Martin, Detroit Free Press, 12 Sep. 2024 See all Example Sentences for poutine

Word History

Etymology

borrowed from Canadian French, earlier, "dessert made of dough or bread crumbs laid over or layered with fruit (from 1810), any of various dishes made with balls of dough, or balls of grated potato stuffed with meat, cooked in boiling water," of uncertain origin

Note: The word has a marked resemblance to English pudding in both form and sense, though if poutine was borrowed from pudding there is no explanation for the devoicing of /d/. Note that pouding/pudding/poudigne (with /d/) as the name for various dishes has existed in Québécois French since at least the early nineteenth century. Alternatively, it has been suggested that poutine should be compared with French dialect forms such as pouture (Yonne department, Burgundy) "mixture of cooked potatoes, bran and swill used as food for hogs," poutie (Beaune, Burgundy) "thick mush" (these and others catalogued in Französisches etymologisches Wörterbuch under the Latin etyma puls "porridge" and *pottus "pot"). For details and bibliographical references see Dictionnaire historique du français québécois (online), s.v. (The numerous forms cited by the Dictionnaire from Occitan dialects, however, seem of doubtful relevance for Québécois French.) The sense "French fries and cheese curds covered in gravy" is apparently not noted in the francophone press before 1977, when the dish is featured in La Tribune of Sherbrooke (August 22, p. 7); at that time poutine was served in a Drummondville restaurant run by one Jean-Paul Roy, who claimed to have invented the dish about 1971. Another earlier claimant is mentioned in La Journal de Québec (August 2, 1990, p. 18, cited in the Dictionnaire), Fernand Lachance of Warwick, Quebec, who alleged that he invented the dish in September, 1957. When asked to put the cheese and fries in the same bag, he claimed that "ça va te faire une maudite poutine" ("That will make you a damned poutine"). Lachance's champions have translated poutine in this statement as "mess"—see, for example, https://www.lachance.org/poutine.php (accessed 1/2/2024)—and suggested that it is the origin of the dish's name, though there is no certain evidence for a sense "mess," at least in 1957. USITO, the online dictionary of the Université de Sherbrooke, defines poutine as "collection of heterogeneous elements, complicated affairs, or sometimes tedious operations" ("ensemble d'éléments hétéroclites, d'affaires compliquées, ou d'opérations parfois fastidieuses"). Available evidence indicates that that this particular poutine is political jargon. The Dictionnaire, which has a similar definition, says that it dates from no earlier than 1959; see also the citations at "Sur les traces du mot «poutine»," 10 janvier 2021, at Le machin à écrire, the blog of Nicolas Guay (machinaecrire.com, accessed 2/1/2024). See also Charles-Alexandre Théorêt, Maudite poutine: l'histoire approximative d'un plat populaire ([Québec]: Éditions Héliotrope, 2007), which illustrates a menu (p. 19) from Lachanche's restaurant Lutin qui rit, purportedly dating to about 1960, that has both "poutine .40" and "poutine avec sauce .50."