Many, many years ago I purchased a cookbook called, "The Christmas Cookbook: Great Canadian Recipes" by Rose Murray. The fact the cover price was $12.95 should tell you how long ago that was! This book contains a recipe very much akin to yours; as well, it contains the following story about tourtieres: "There is a story that the name originated in the sixteenth century when "tourtes", large wild pigeons, abounded in New France. Settlers felled the birds by the thousands, and thrifty housewives transformed them into a variety of meat pies, including the "tarte a la tourte", now abbreviated to tourtiere." [An aside: I suspect these wild pigeons were the infamous "Passenger Pigeons" that disappeared in the 19th century.] I'm not suggesting this story is authoritative, but it is interesting. Me, I use a little venison in mine for no reason other than I happen to have some thanks to my son-in-law. Merry festivities to all readers and particularly to the hard-working and hard-blogging folks at KAF.

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