As a project to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the 1713 founding of Fortress Louisbourg, now a National Historic Site on Cape Breton Island, it takes its place beside Hope Dunton’s From the Hearth: Recipes from the World of 18th- Century Louisbourg (1986), which presented a sensitive rendering of original recipes for late 20th century cooks. Dunton is one of many people credited with helping in some way with this new book, written by two main authors, Anne Marie Lane Jonah and Chantal Véchambre, with contributions by six others. Jonah is staff historian for Parks Canada at the Fortress and Véchambre is a French chef now living in Nova Scotia. Together, they have produced a handsome and informative book of history and recreated recipes. It includes an excellent bibliography, detailed endnotes, a recipe index, a text index, a glossary, and many attractive photographs, both of the food and the site, as well as a few archival maps and illustrations. Its bilingualism is particularly noteworthy. To show the range of topics explored, here are the seven chapter titles: “First Encounters: Nicholas Denys and the Mi’kmaq,” “Acadie: The First French Cuisine in North America,” “To Louisbourg: Evolving Taste and the New Colony,” “Fine Dining: Bringing Two Worlds Together,” (that is, homeland and colony), “The Soul of the Meal: Beverages in the 18th Century,” and “Desserts: A Bittersweet Ending.” Each chapter opens with a geographical and historical overview, features a variety of sidebars, and ends with recipes. I particularly liked the personal stories of individual colonists, such as Madame Laurent, a former slave who became a respected independent businesswoman (68–70). Happily, I learned much while reading French Taste in Atlantic Canada. Pieces of buckwheat crepes were added to soups as a thickener in Acadia (35), and Acadians planted and ate large quantities of potatoes long before the continental French willingly did so (38). Fresh grapes were imported in containers resembling amphorae but with blunted ends (103); the new use of coal instead of wood in the ovens led to thicker, darker and therefore stronger glass (159); and beverages were sometimes cooled when bottles were wrapped in damp cloths and hung in the breezes, even in summer (172). The authors chose the recipes from surviving documentary and archaeological records of the indigenous and imported ingredients and cookbooks available during the French regime in Atlantic Canada, as sample representations of creatively blended French and Atlantic cuisines (6). This is a fine book, one I’m glad to have, and I applaud the authors for adding it to our limited Canadian food history bookshelf. But I have selected several small irritations to mention, complaints about making the reader work too hard for basic information. When explaining how they chose the recipes, a few paragraphs identifying the source cookbooks would have been helpful, instead of relegating that information to the bibliography. For instance, the first recipe, “Oyster Casserole” is “after Massialot,” / “d’après Massialot”(18–19), whose name and all the others, such as La Varenne and Menon, I fortunately recognize due to my years of research, but someone buying this book as a memento in the gift shop has to search for their identities. Also, oddly, many photos are without captions. One, to me, looked like fried fish in a long-handled skillet, but the text told me it was a folded buckwheat crepe, an Acadian speciality (34). In fact, I learned that Acadians didn’t fry fish (36). Unfortunately, other photos are marred by being centred in the fold. And I noticed several typos, such as “service” instead of “surface” (84). The “French hot …