ACreole cooking

A.1 Creole is not Cajun

Louisiana cooking is a mix of many peoples. A traditional New Orleans gumbo shows it in one pot, served over rice.

• a French roux
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• okra from Africa
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• filé from the Native peoples
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• Spanish peppers
• Cajun sausage
• oysters from a Yugoslav fisherman
• on the side, hot French bread from a German baker

The old Creole favorites include these dishes.

• trout meunière
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• oyster patties
• daube glacé
• hogshead cheese
• mirliton stuffed with crabmeat

At breakfast there are calas, which are rice cakes, with cane syrup. After dinner there is café brûlot, and pecan pralines.

A.2 The first settlers and the Native peoples

In 1718 Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, a French Canadian, founded New Orleans on a bend of the Mississippi River. The site was a small, swampy patch of land. The French settlers soon found that wheat, their main food, would not grow in the wet, humid climate, and they sometimes waited up to two years for a shipment of flour.

The Native peoples kept them alive.

• They grew corn and made many kinds of bread from it.
• They grew squashes, including the chayote, called mirliton, and the cushaw, both still eaten in Louisiana.
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• They grew dried beans.
• Syrups made from persimmons and chokecherries sweetened their smoked meat.
• They thickened stews with powdered sassafras, known today as filé powder.

A.3 German farmers and French nuns

Most of the French did not want to live on Native food, so the company that ran the colony looked for farmers. By 1721 several hundred Germans had arrived. They farmed about twenty miles upriver and sent fresh produce into the city. They also became fine bakers of French bread and pastry, and many of the best local bakeries still have Swiss and German names.

The Ursuline nuns arrived in 1727. They came from aristocratic and middle-class French families and brought the newest French cooking with them. Their agreement required them to plant an herb garden and teach its uses. A bay leaf went into soups and stews against souring, and into flour against weevils. Parsley was used to take away the smell of garlic.

A.4 African cooks

The Compagnie des Indes, which controlled the colony, brought some two thousand enslaved Africans from West Africa and the West Indies by 1744. African cooks carried a skilled tradition of their own. By the 1500s, West African farmers grew a long list of crops.

• corn
• peanuts
• yams
• eggplant
• garlic and onions
• kidney beans
• rice
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• leafy greens
• okra
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Their food was cooked long and slowly and served with delicate sauces.

Okra, called kingombo, is thought to have come to the Americas with enslaved Africans. When it was in season it thickened the gumbo; for the rest of the year filé powder did that job. Gumbo z'herbes, a gumbo of many greens and herbs loved by Catholic families in Louisiana, comes from a similar African dish. An old saying promises a new friend for every different green in the pot.

By 1743, when a new governor known as the Grand Marquis arrived, New Orleans had a polished Creole society. The governor's circle brought chefs from France and impressed local leaders with grand feasts in the style of the French court.

A.5 The Spanish, and the Cajuns

In 1762 France secretly handed Louisiana to Spain. The Spanish brought cooking ideas they had learned from the Maya, Aztecs and Incas. Even the word Creole comes from Spanish: criollo first meant someone born outside Europe or Africa to European or African parents.

During Spanish rule, the first Acadians came. Their families had left France for Nova Scotia. In 1755 the British ordered them to swear loyalty to England or leave Canada; they refused and were deported. Many ended up in France, poor, and when Spain offered them a home in French-speaking Louisiana, many accepted. They settled deep in the swamps and bayous and lived well on the fresh food of the wetlands. Their descendants are the Cajuns. In 1986 there were perhaps 750,000 of them, and many still spoke a French close to that of the 1600s.

The Spanish loved peppers and tomatoes, and they began putting green pepper into sauces and meat dishes. Tomato together with roux became the heart of shrimp Creole sauce, of the gravy for grillades, and of court bouillon, a thick seafood stew. Paella, the Spanish dish of rice and shellfish, led to Creole jambalaya.

The Cajuns lived far from the cities, cut off by money, culture and geography. Even the poorest household could grow a hot pepper or two. A Cajun cook, Joel Cavaness, remembered eating only what the family could grow, catch or shoot, cooked in one big pot, and eating crawfish daily for weeks when it was in season. Flavor came from garden peppers with onion, garlic and bell pepper. With these, Cajun cooks made many dishes.

• bisque
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• étouffée
• court bouillon
• sauce piquante
• jambalaya
• gumbo
• plain boiled crawfish, shrimp and crabs

In the 1840s a Louisianian back from the Mexican War gave the McIlhenny family of Avery Island Mexican pepper seeds, and Tabasco sauce was the result.

A.6 Later arrivals

Each new group added something.

• Aristocrats escaping the French Revolution brought more haute cuisine.
• Newcomers from Santo Domingo and the West Indies brought ways of cooking fish with a Spanish flavor.
• Late in the 1800s Sicilians landing in New Orleans brought rich red gravies and stuffings of garlic and breadcrumbs for artichokes and eggplant; in Louisiana these became stuffed mirliton.
• Oystermen from the Dalmatian coast were working local oyster beds by 1840, and by 1858 the city directory needed five pages for oyster bars, oyster houses and oyster restaurants.
• In 1867 Lee Yuen, a rice farmer from Canton, perfected a way to dry shrimp, so shrimp could be had all year.

A.7 Hard times, tourists and a revival

Creole cooking as it is known today was settled between 1800 and 1860. By 1840 New Orleans ranked fourth in size among American cities and second among its ports, and it was one of the first American cities with public restaurants. Its hotel dining rooms served both continental and Creole food.

The Civil War left the Creoles poor, but they still loved to eat and to entertain. Without money for fine meat, they made gumbo out of fresh vegetables plus a bit of leftover chicken or seafood. When coffee grew dear, refugees from Napoleonic France showed them how to roast chicory root to stretch it.

From the 1950s to the early 1970s, tourism helped the city's economy but nearly ruined its food. Restaurants made a milder version for visitors.

• Chicory left the coffee.
• Filé and slow-cooked crab and oyster left the gumbo.
• Black pepper replaced red.
• Shortcuts crept in, such as red sauce from canned tomato paste.
• Visitors got eggs Benedict at brunch instead of grillades and grits.

Real Creole cooking lived on in homes and in neighborhood and family restaurants.

In the 1980s food writers wanted something new, and Creole and Cajun food suddenly became fashionable across the country. It was cheap, quite easy to cook, and nothing like the elegant food of the years before.

That fame had a cost. Across much of America, Creole came to suggest blackened fish and meat, heavy fiery seasoning, and a red sauce much like one from a can. A writer from south Louisiana noted that the dishes local families had eaten for generations went largely unnoticed by the new fans.