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By Maida Owens, www.louisianafolklife.org
Irma Rodriguez of
Natchitoches prepare Mexican tamales at the 1997 Festival of
American Folklife. Photo: Maida Owens. |
Louisiana's complex blending
of cultures over 300 years produced distinctive regional food
traditions for which we are known worldwide. But we have other
food traditions that are not so well known. Each cultural group
has retained food traditions, and even within cultural groups,
traditions vary from community to community, and family to family.
Food traditions are particularly
intriguing because they are some of the most persistent of traditions.
Generally, people resist changing their food patterns. As a result,
food often becomes closely tied to cultural identity and can
reveal cultural processes such as blending, diffusion, or maintenance.
Gumbo is an excellent example
of cultural blending, or creolization. This dish so closely identified
with South Louisiana, melds African, European, and Native American
cultures. The word itself is derived from the Bantu word for
okra, nkombo. The okra plant, a favorite in Africa, is a Middle Eastern plant brought to America by Portuguese traders. Filé (ground sassafras leaves) is Native American.
The origin of gumbo--usually defined as a soup-like dish featuring
two or more meats or seafood and served with rice--is often attributed
to the French bouillabaisse, but the strong preference for soups
in Africa reinforced the tradition.
Any gumbo researcher soon
discovers that there are many types and that there is no consensus
about what makes a good gumbo. If your family prefers an almost
black roux, your family probably has ties to the prairies west
of the Atchafalaya Basin. If your family prefers a lighter roux
or you add tomatoes, you are more likely to have ties to southeast
Louisiana east of the Atchafalaya.
Preparing cracklins
at the 1993 Louisiana Prairie Folklife Festival. Photo: Maida
Owens. |
Although people in all parts
of South Louisiana make meat and sausage gumbo thicker with filé,
seafood gumbo thickened with okra is more common along the coast,
where seafood is more plentiful. If you make duck, venison, or
squirrel gumbo, you most likely have a hunter in the family.
If you put a scoop of potato salad in your gumbo before serving,
you likely have some German influence. If you make the much less
common, meatless gumbo z'herbes for Lent, you are likely
Catholic and your family has been in Louisiana many generations.
You are less likely to find this in many of the Cajun and Creole
cookbooks so readily available now. And if your family wants to extend the gumbo, you might add boiled eggs.
No matter which type of gumbo
you make, though, you likely feel that the gumbo that you make
is the "right way" to make a gumbo. If eating and cooking
gumbo are favorite pastimes in Louisiana, arguing about what
is a good gumbo comes in a close third. And, if you didn't realize
that gumbo was so complicated, you likely are recent to Louisiana.
Gumbo also illustrates cultural
diffusion, or the spreading of a cultural trait, because even
before the Cajun food craze, gumbo, hot sauce, and other south
Louisiana foods spread into North Louisiana and south Mississippi.
The likelihood of these foods being family traditions is proportionately
related to the distance from South Louisiana. In other words,
people in North Louisiana, east Texas, and south Mississippi
are more likely to make gumbo than people in north Mississippi,
Arkansas, and Alabama. One factor is people moving to South Louisiana
and New Orleans for jobs, becoming accustomed to the food, and
bringing new food traditions back upon their return home.
Loulan Pitre of Cut
Off inspects his onion crop. Photo: Maida Owens. |
Cultural maintenance can
be illustrated by food traditions in many cultural groups whether
they descend from the colonial settlement, were part of the later
waves of immigration, or recently arrived, especially in cultural
groups that are not part of the dominant cultural group in a
region. Food reminds us of home and family and becomes central
to special occasions and rituals. As a result, food traditions
can be the most resistant to change.
Examples abound throughout
Louisiana. The German enclave of Roberts Cove in Acadia Parish
still makes sauerkraut. Hungarians have been in Tangipahoa Parish
for about 100 years and take special pride in their Hungarian
sausage. Filipinos celebrate special occasions with the noodle
dish pansit. Croatians in Plaquemines Parish keep goats
just so they can make goat milk cheese. The Irish in New Orleans
celebrate St. Patrick's Day by parading and throwing to the crowd
the ingredients of potato stew.
Some of the most visible
markers of Creole French influence in Natchitoches are the foodways:
meat pies and Cane River cakes. West of Natchitoches in Los Adais
in Sabine Parish, one finds colonial Spanish influences, and
again, the primary evidence is in the foodways: tamales and salsa.
One food tradition closely tied to Italian-American ethnic identity
is the St. Joseph altar with its fig pastries, casseroles, cookies,
cakes, and special breads in the form of Catholic symbols. Native
Americans have retained some foods that have become symbolic
to their identity, including fry bread and Indian tacos. A few
Coushatta (Koasati) continue to make hominy soup, which has almost
died out, as it is time-consuming and difficult, beginning with
grinding the hominy by hand using a mortar and pestle.
Egma Pineda of New
Orleans prepares Nicaraguan tamales. Photo: Greg Wirth. |
The impact of Native American
foodways is still seen in food traditions of people descended
from the early settlers. Native Americans introduced Europeans
and Africans in both north and South Louisiana to corn bread,
grits, sweet potatoes, squash, beans, deer, turkey, fish, and
such. Then, the newcomers added foods that were most important
to them. Europeans brought carrots, turnips, beets, cabbage,
and lettuce. Africans contributed okra, yams, peanuts (although
originally from South America), watermelon, collards, hot peppers,
and pepper sauce. Pork was central to the early settler's diet,
and remains important to many.
Scholars divide the state
into three major cultural regions--New Orleans, South Louisiana,
and North Louisiana, each of which contains groups whose cultures
remain distinct from that of the larger region. Distinct food
traditions have persisted in each, but those in New Orleans and
South Louisiana are entwined.
Sarah Albritton and
her son Lewen serve a plate in Sarah's Restaurant in Ruston,
Louisiana. Photo: Maida Owens. |
New Orleans is home to a
vast array of food traditions, but it is best known for Creole
cooking. At one time, it may have been possible to say that Creole
cooking was the fancier cooking of New Orleans with more European
influences and Cajun cooking the simpler food of the country
folk, but this is no longer true. Today, it is difficult to distinguish
between Cajun and Creole cooking as they are practiced in the
home. Nowadays when applied to food, the terms Cajun and
Creole are frequently used interchangeably or together.
But Creole most often refers to the haute cuisine of New Orleans
restaurants that developed from the intensive blending of the
city's various food traditions, many of which originated with
European-trained chefs. For example, Jules Alciatore of Antoine's
Restaurant introduced baked fish en papillote (in paper) and
oysters Rockefeller. The experimentation continues with such
dishes as seafood pasta introduced by Ralph and Kacoo's Restaurant.
To appreciate South Louisiana
foods fully, one must remember that Cajun and Creole cooking
are the products of 300 years of continuous sharing and borrowing
among the region's many cultural groups. For example, the French
contributed sauces (sauce piquante, étouffée, stews,
bisque), sweets (pralines, a modified French confection with
pecans instead of the original walnuts), and breads (French bread,
beignets or square doughnuts with powdered sugar, and corasse,
fried bread dough eaten with cane syrup). The Spanish added jambalaya
(a spicy rice dish probably from the Spanish paella).
Barbeque pork chops
is one of the foods available at the 1993 Louisiana Prairie Folklife
Festival. Photo: Maida Owens. |
Africans contributed okra,
barbecue, and deep-fat frying and reinforced the Spanish preference
for hot spices and soups. Germans, who arrived in Louisiana before
the Acadians, contributed sausages (andouille and boudin) and
"Creole" or brown mustard. Caribbean influence is seen
in the bean and rice dishes of red beans and rice and congri
(crowder peas and rice). Native Americans contributed filé
and a fondness for corn bread. Many of these foods are generally
known, but far fewer are aware of lesser-known food delicacies
in Louisiana as the prairie Cajun langue boureé
(stuffed beef tongue) or chaudin (sausage-stuffed pork
stomach).
One distinction about food
in New Orleans and South Louisiana is that food is regarded as
far more than mere sustenance. Food is relished, and the standard
for merely adequate cooking is much higher here than in other
parts of the country. Just as people argue over the right way
to make a gumbo, they enjoy talking about food, exchanging recipes,
and collecting cookbooks. "What did you eat last night?"
is a frequent question. And everyone enjoys experimenting with,
preparing, and of course eating food.
Robert Albritton
of Ruston demonstrates preparing fish for frying. Photo: Maida
Owens. |
It is not surprising that
the average cook possesses highly skilled culinary standards.
Because both men and women take pride in their cooking -- and
enjoy any opportunity to show off their skills -- every gathering
becomes a food event. Family food events in particular become
social functions. Through food, families maintain a sense of
generation and extension. Older family members pass family lore
to the younger ones, and individuals learn about their cultural
identity as well as about their nieces, cousins, and aunts.
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