The Anne Series Food & Drink Index is here! You can look at a list of the items (whether in alphabetical or chronological order), and the volumes/page numbers where they appear.

If you need more detail, the Anne Series Food & Drink Concordance is a chronological list, including the page number, quote, cook/preparer, and consumer.

If you’re planning an Anne-themed party, here is a list of Anne of Green Gables menu ideas that are straight from the book.

* Please let me know if you find any errors! I didn’t have an editor, and I was always reading in bed right before falling asleep, so I’m sure I missed a lot. *

The top 10 most often consumed foods:

1. cake (63)
2. pie (49)
3. bread (37)
4. apple (32)
5. cream (30)
6. chicken (24)
7. cooky (23)
7. fish (23)
9. berry (20)
9. potato (20)

Unsurprisingly, the most oft-consumed food item is CAKE. And so many kinds of cake!

• angel cake
• buttercup cake
• chocolate cake
• Christmas cake
• cupcake
• fruit cake
• gold-and-silver cake
• layer cake
• nut cake
• plum cake
• pound cake
• strawberry shortcake
• sponge cake
• wedding cake (most often a fruit cake)

The top 10 most often consumed drinks:

1. tea (39)
2. milk (29)
3. water (11)
4. alcohol, unspecified (5)
5. coffee (4)
5. wine (4)
7. bottle (3)
8. buttermilk (2)
8. currant wine (2)
8. lemonade (2)
8. orange juice (2)

I didn’t fully realize this till recently, but there are now officially 9 books in L.M. Montgomery’s Anne series. The last, The Blythes Are Quoted, wasn’t published in its entirety till 2008, although a lot of the short stories from the manuscript were printed in a book editors called The Road to Yesterday.  It’s teeeeerrible, by the way — The Blythes Are Quoted, I mean. I don’t know if I would’ve finished it if I hadn’t been compiling a food and drink index and concordance.

The books in order:

1. Anne of Green Gables
2. Anne of Avonlea
3. Anne of the Island
4. Anne of Windy Poplars
5. Anne’s House of Dreams
6. Anne of Ingleside
7. Rainbow Valley
8. Rilla of Ingleside
9. The Blythes Are Quoted

For cataloging nerds like myself, the data entry rules for the index and concordance are as follows:

• The food or drink is listed in the created sources in singular form.
• The food or drink must have been physically present at some point to be listed. (It does not have to be consumed.) Characters can be talking about an item they had in the past or will definitely make in the future, but not in a figurative way.
• The food or drink must be mentioned in a separate meal to warrant an entry.
• The food or drink must be a specific dish or beverage. General meals like “breakfast” or “dinner” do not qualify.
• Since “tea” can refer to a whole meal, it was only counted if it was made clear that the actual drink was served.
• Under the cook/consumer fields, characters are listed by their first and last name, if available.
• Under the cook/consumer fields, characters are listed by their first and last name, if available.
• Food or drink had to be intended for human consumption to count. For example, the liver for Dusty Miller and skim milk for the pigs did not count. In Anne of Windy Poplars, the buttermilk used as a beauty treatment did not count, since it was not meant to be eaten.
• Crops were only counted if they were being picked/picked already and ready to eat.
• “Unspecified” can mean a few things:
  1. The item is in its natural state, e.g. an apple or potato.
  2. The type is not specified.
  3. It was not specified how the item was prepared or cooked.