Photograph by Ian Barrett

One should not confuse the Québécois confection pouding chômeur with the congealed chocolate and vanilla stuff sold in single-serving plastic pots at supermarkets. This is because pouding chômeur—which translates as “unemployed person’s pudding”—is the caviar of puddings, a dessert to be savoured by those with a serious sweet tooth. The dish as you’ll find it today in many trendy Québécois restaurants consists of a dollop of biscuit dough—or, alternatively, white cake—baked in a bath of cream and maple syrup. Lots of maple syrup. In fact, given the price of maple syrup, its poverty-inspired name is amusingly inappropriate.

But in Quebec in 1929, when pouding chômeur was reportedly invented, the dish reflected its working-class roots. The recipe was created, so the story goes, by female factory workers who had access to only basic ingredients in their industrial neighbourhoods: butter, flour, milk, brown sugar. No fruit, no eggs, and certainly no chocolate.

When Pierre-Luc Chevalier was a child, his mother made pouding chômeur at least once a week. “It was the Saturday night dessert. Or something we had when people were coming at the last minute,” he said. Chevalier happens to be chef and owner of La Cantine, a 1970s kitsch-inspired restaurant, located in Montreal’s Plateau neighbourhood, and he now makes the dessert in his restaurant, remaining faithful to the brown sugar base—though he has added fleur de sel to give it a salty caramel flair.
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