New England Brunch: Seasonal Midday Meals for Leisurely Weekends

A culinary journey through local flavors and global influences, featuring 100+ creative recipes for every season.

Brunch can lean sweet or savory. It can be as low-key or as luxe as you like. And making brunch at home allows you to get creative with local and seasonal ingredients—like strawberries, blueberries, apples, cranberries, pumpkins, and our beloved maple syrup. It can even include coastal seafood, which New England has in abundance. Throw in a selection of homemade beverages featuring fresh, seasonal fruit and you’ve got the perfect midday meal.

New England Brunch offers more than 100 enticing recipes for homemade pancakes, muffins, doughnuts, pastries, scones, bagels, popovers, frittatas, quiches, stratas, pitcher drinks, and more—year round. It features all the classics, like Boston Cream Doughnuts, Blueberry Buttermilk Pancakes, and Red Flannel Hash, alongside creative twists on traditional recipes, like Maple Walnut Cinnamon Rolls, Blackberry Marjoram Scones, Zucchini and Earl Grey Tea Cake, and Herby Lobster Benedict. Also included is a bonus chapter with recipes for homemade dim sum, the Cantonese equivalent of brunch, which has become an institution in Boston’s Chinatown and beyond.

Brunch in New England uniquely melds indigenous crops and customs with British cookery and pops of the vibrant culinary influences of the Portuguese, Italian, Irish, French, Jewish, Asian, African, and Latin-American immigrants who settled here. From the mountains of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont to the coastal communities of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, the cultural and seasonal tapestry of flavors provide endless culinary inspiration for leisurely weekend brunch gatherings.