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Monarchists, however, may join vegetarians in objecting to his recipe: He adopted a classic French way to serve wild hare, Lièvre à la Royale, and replaced the “Royale” with “Confederation,” because, he said, “we have no monarchy in Canada.”

It is his book’s focus on the Quebec cabane à sucre, or sugar shack, where maple syrup is made, that caused him to look at a beaver and see, not an emblem on a nickel, but dinner on a platter.

“It is just the meat you can find at a sugar shack,” he said.

Each of the 100 recipes uses maple syrup in some way.

The squirrel and beaver recipes are among the most complicated, likely reserved for professional cooks willing to follow the elaborate, multi-stage preparation and staging.

The squirrel dish took him five hours to prepare, he said.

The beaver dish required six pages and more than 30 close-up, step-by-step photos, including how to remove the tail meat from inside its tough skin to make the stuffing. (As Mr. Picard discovered, the outer skin of the tail could be used as a unique, but thumb-less, mitten.)

Ingredients include foie gras, maple-smoked ham, oyster and button mushrooms, pig’s blood and cream. The most important step, however, is carefully removing the animal’s castor sacs, gland-like pouches attached to the tail.

“If you cut them or damage them, it is going to contaminate the meat,” he said.

“It is something most people will have to just read about. It is more of a chef’s recipe. I made it to please myself as a cook.