July 1 and 4 are the respective national holidays of Canada and the US. In honour of the occasions, Taste has chosen to explore the "national'' cuisines of these young and polyglot nations, where the food styles can range from the immigrant-influenced fare of the big cities to the down-home simplicity of rural areas to the singular tastes and textures of a particular state or province (Louisiana, Quebec, Canada's High Arctic). In both cases, of course, a truly national cuisine can often be hard to pin down, elusive, although several things are indeed certain: Canadians and Americans, on the whole, love to eat, and the things that they eat are often very tasty.

What is Canada's national dish? Even Canadians might be hard-pressed to answer that question.

Unlike the Spanish, who have paella , or the Scottish, who can't get their fill of haggis, Canadians won't really be gathering over one foodstuff in particular when they celebrate their 128th birthday -- Canada Day -- tomorrow.

Ask any citizen of the Great White North to identify a uniquely Canadian dish, in fact, and he or she will probably come up with a number of different answers, including: tortiere (a kind of Quebecois quiche), French Canadian pea soup (yellow instead of green), pemmican (cold pounded moose meat that's been mixed with melted fat) or bannock (an unleavened bread that is made from oat or barley meal).

In many instances, moreover, the poser of such a query might be just as likely to hear mention, say, of a roti (if the answer came from a Jamaican-Canadian cab driver in the bustling metropolis of Toronto) or of curry (if the person who was asked were a Canadian of Indian origin in Eastern-influenced Vancouver).

As this variety -- a quality which characterises the country's political culture as well -- makes clear, the foods that Canadians call their own are defined less by their individuality than they are by the balance that they strike between the old and the very new.

Having said that, however, there are more than a few common denominators in terms of Canada's cuisine -- namely a freshness that springs from the bounty of its land and waters (few seafood dishes in the world, for example, can compare with a slab of Pacific salmon or a broiled Maritime lobster) and a quirkiness that is two parts instinct for survival and one part genuine eccentricity (how many other countries, after all, can boast at least ten different ways to prepare and serve a muskrat?).

On a less esoteric note, there is also one Canadian food custom that many Americans will still marvel over -- and that is the habit Canadians have of putting vinegar (white or malt) on their french fries.

On the subject of Americans, they too are not without their culinary peculiarities.

Food portions in the United States, for example, are often much too big for comfort, at least as far as many outside observers are concerned.

And unlike many in the American South, no self-respecting Canadian (despite an occasional penchant for muskrat) would ever dream of eating a possum.

On the whole, however, the cuisine of the United States is rarely so plainly exotic, characterised as it is by a casual simplicity -- it was the Americans, after all, who single-handedly invented the concepts of comfort food, the square meal and picnics as we currently know them -- and the association of food with patriotism ("as American,'' for example, "as apple pie'').

At the same time, it is a highly ironic fact that many of the foods one commonly identifies as being quintessentially American -- hot dogs and hamburgers being two prime examples -- are rooted in foreign lands, though there are many others (like New England clam chowder, the Philadelphia hoagie and Cajun jambalaya) that were indeed the products of American culinary know-how.

Of course, many gourmands might say, the hoagie, as tasty as it is, can hardly compare in terms of historical cachet with such foreign-born delicacies as a Napoleon or a Sacher torte or a 2,000-year-old egg.

And perhaps they're right, though the discriminating eater could do considerably worse on the occasion of the US republic's impending birthday -- its 229th on Tuesday -- than to raise a glass of Coca-Cola and nibble on a piece of American cheese.

In recognition of its neighbour to the north, he or she might also go whole hog, and save some room for the muskrat.

No caption