Key points
Nearly every French recipe works in Canada, but the shopping list doesn’t translate word for word: flour has no T number, lardons aren’t sold ready-cut and crème fraîche is hard to find. French Cooking in Canada (frenchcooking.ca) tells you which Canadian product to buy for each recipe.
- T45 flour = cake and pastry flour, T55 = all-purpose flour, T65 = bread flour. The French number measures ash, not protein.
- Crème liquide entière is 35% whipping cream. Real crème fraîche exists (Liberté, 40%, 250 mL tubs), but not every store carries it.
- There are no lardons at the deli counter: buy thick-cut smoked bacon and cut it into 1 cm batons.
- You can’t bring French charcuterie into Canada in your luggage; pasteurized cheese is allowed, within limits set by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).
Your French recipes work fine in Canada; it’s the shopping list that gets you. Take quiche lorraine: the supermarket has cream at 10, 15, 18 and 35%, but not a single pack of lardons. The answer is 35% cream and thick-cut smoked bacon. French Cooking in Canada, another site we publish, gives that kind of swap for every recipe.
Why grocery shopping gets tricky in Canada
In France, when a recipe calls for 20 cl of cream, you grab the usual carton without thinking. Canada sells the same products, but under different names, and outside Quebec the labels are often in English only.
It isn’t only a matter of names. French unsalted butter is at least 82% fat, Canadian butter at least 80%. Nobody will notice in a yogurt cake, but in kouign-amann or beurre blanc you will, so look for a butter labelled European-style.
Flour, cream, lardons: the swaps
Start with flour, because it’s the most confusing. The French T number measures ash, the minerals left when flour is burned, while Canadian flour is sorted by protein. So choose by purpose: cake and pastry, all-purpose or bread.
| In the French recipe | At a Canadian supermarket | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Farine T45 | Cake and pastry flour | About 9% protein, for madeleines and light cakes |
| Farine T55 | Unbleached all-purpose flour | A little stronger, but fine for tarts and crêpes |
| Farine T65 | Bread flour | For baguettes and country loaves |
| Levure chimique (11 g sachet) | 2 tsp baking powder | Canadian baking powder is double-acting and gives more lift |
| Levure fraîche (42 g cube) | Instant yeast, a third of the weight | 7 g instant yeast replaces 20 g fresh yeast |
| Crème liquide entière | 35% whipping cream | Same fat content, doesn’t split when boiled |
| Crème fraîche épaisse | Liberté crème fraîche 40%, or homemade | 14% sour cream splits in a hot sauce |
| Lardons fumés | Thick-cut smoked bacon, cut into batons | Same pork belly, but regular bacon is too thin |
| Moutarde de Dijon | Dijon mustard, never yellow mustard | Yellow mustard is mild and coloured with turmeric |
Crème fraîche is the only item on this list you might not find at all. Liberté’s tub usually sits near the specialty cheeses or the sour cream, but not every store carries it. If yours doesn’t, stir 2 tablespoons of buttermilk into 250 mL of 35% cream and leave it at room temperature for 12 to 24 hours. It thickens and takes on the mild tang of the real thing.
Reblochon, Morteau sausage: the real gaps
Other products aren’t renamed. They just aren’t sold here. Outside Quebec, raw-milk cheese has to be aged at least 60 days before it can be sold, which rules out young cheeses like Reblochon. For tartiflette, Oka, a Quebec washed-rind cheese, melts as well as Reblochon. For aligot, use fresh cheese curds (the poutine kind), which stretch like tomme fraîche.
Charcuterie calls for the same kind of workaround. Swap Morteau sausage for smoked Polish kielbasa; it’s already cooked, so just warm it through in the dish. For Toulouse sausage, use plain pork sausage with no fennel or herbs. For either one, European grocers and Polish or Portuguese butchers are your best bet.
Don’t count on your suitcase to fill the gap. Saucisson, ham and pâté from France aren’t allowed into Canada. Pasteurized cheese is allowed for personal use, but the limits change, so check the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s page before each trip, and declare it at the border.
Ham and wine: what to ask for, where to buy
At the deli counter, ask for plain cooked ham if a recipe wants jambon blanc; the Black Forest ham beside it is smoked.
Wine isn’t sold everywhere, and the rules depend on the province. In Quebec, you buy it at the SAQ, the government-owned liquor store, though grocery stores and dépanneurs (corner stores) sell some wines too. In Ontario, go to the LCBO, the province’s own chain, or since 2024 a licensed grocery store. In Alberta, only private stores sell it.
French Cooking in Canada, recipe by recipe
The table above is only the start. frenchcooking.ca lists 130 swaps, and more usefully builds them into nearly 50 classic recipes. Open the gratin dauphinois and the shopping list already says Yukon Gold potatoes, 3.25% milk and 35% cream. The site is run by Thomas Tremblay, who moved from France three years ago and worked out these swaps in the same aisles you’re about to shop in.
Nothing needs converting: quantities are in grams, as in France, and temperatures in °C, with °F for ovens that only show Fahrenheit. The recipes are in English, so you can share them with Canadian friends or family, and every dish keeps its French name. For cannelés or kugelhopf, whose moulds are hard to find here, the kitchen tools page links to Amazon.ca; those links earn the site a commission.
If you’re following a recipe from Marmiton or a cookbook brought from France, look each ingredient up by name in the full swaps list before you shop. For the rest of settling in, from housing to banking, see our moving checklist.
