According to both Cartier and Champlain, the women pounded the corn to meal in a wooden mortar, and removed the bran by means of fans made of the bark of trees.

From this meal they made bread, sometimes mixing with the meal the beans (_Phaseolus vulgaris_), which had been boiled and mashed.

Or they would boil both Indian corn and beans into a thick soup, adding to the soup blueberries,[6] dried raspberries, or pieces of deer's fat.

The meal derived from the corn and beans they would make into bread, baking it in the ashes.
[Footnote 6: The Canada Blueberry (_Vaccinium canadense_), called by the French _blues_ or _bluets_.

These blues were collected and dried by the Amerindians, and made a sweet nutriment for eating in the winter.] Or they would take the pounded Indian corn without removing the bran, and put two or three handfuls of it into an earthen pot full of water, stirring it from time to time, when it boiled, so that it might not adhere to the pot.