48 Fun Facts About Cajun and Creole Food

Which three vegetables make up the Cajun 'holy trinity'?

Onion, celery and bell pepper, with the pepper standing in for the carrot of French mirepoix. The trio is centuries old in Louisiana pots, but the 'holy trinity' nickname only caught on around 1980.

The Cajuns descend from French colonists deported by the British from which region?

Acadia, the French colony in what is now Nova Scotia and its neighbours. 'Cajun' is simply 'Acadian' worn down by generations of Louisiana speech.

The word gumbo most likely comes from an African word for which vegetable?

Okra. The Bantu word, close to ngombo, crossed the Atlantic with enslaved Africans, and in parts of the South 'gumbo' is still another name for the vegetable itself.

On which day of the week is red beans and rice traditionally cooked in New Orleans?

Monday. It was washday, so a pot of beans seasoned with the bone from Sunday's ham could simmer untended while the laundry was scrubbed.

File powder is ground from the leaves of which tree, once root beer's main flavouring?

Sassafras. Choctaw cooks were grinding its dried leaves long before Louisiana kitchens borrowed them, and the French name is a warning: file means 'spun into threads', which is what it does if boiled.

What do Cajun cooks do with a roux that shows black specks?

Start again. A dark roux can take 45 minutes of constant stirring, but even a few scorched specks would spoil the whole pot, so there is no rescuing it.

A classic Creole roux is often built on which fat that Cajun cooks traditionally leave out?

Butter. Creole cooks had easy access to it, while Cajun cooks made do with oil or lard, which also survive the long, hot stirring a dark roux needs without scorching.

Gumbo z'herbes, the 'green gumbo' made from a potful of leafy greens, is traditionally eaten during which season?

Lent. With meat off the table for Catholics, cooks boiled down turnip tops, mustard greens, spinach and whatever else was growing into a thick green pot instead.

What is boudin?

A pork and rice sausage, sometimes called 'dirty rice in a casing'. Many fans never eat the casing at all: they squeeze the soft filling straight into their mouths.

What is added to make boudin rouge?

Pork blood. Strict rules on processing fresh blood have made boudin rouge a rarity, so nearly all the boudin sold today is the bloodless white kind.

What is tasso?

Smoked seasoned pork shoulder. Fiery with cayenne, it is seldom eaten on its own: Cajun cooks dice it to flavour pots of beans, gumbo and jambalaya.

Andouille sausage is a speciality of a stretch of the Mississippi above New Orleans named for which settlers?

German. Germans farmed the 'German Coast' from the colony's early days, paddling their surplus downriver in pirogues to stock the markets of New Orleans.

What are gratons?

Fried pork cracklings. They began as a by-product: skin and fat were boiled down for lard, and the crisp, peppery scraps left in the pot became the snack.

Chaudin, or ponce, is a stuffed and smoked what?

Pig's stomach. Butchers pack it with sausage meat and tie it shut into a small cushion, which is braised in gravy and carved into slices like a roast.

Which Cajun dish is a popular 'smothered' preparation of crawfish or shrimp?

Etouffee. Unlike gumbo, it is often built on a pale 'blond' roux cooked for only a few minutes, which keeps the sauce light in colour and almost sweet.

Creole 'red' jambalaya gets its colour from which ingredient that Cajun 'brown' jambalaya leaves out?

Tomatoes. They were easy to come by around New Orleans but scarcer out in Cajun country, where the pot takes its brown colour from meat seared hard at the start instead.

Which country star wrote and recorded the 1952 hit 'Jambalaya (On the Bayou)', a roll-call of Louisiana dishes?

Hank Williams. His chorus of jambalaya, crawfish pie and file gumbo has been covered by everyone from Fats Domino to the Carpenters, carrying Louisiana cooking around the world.

Jambalaya is related to which West African dish?

Jollof. Enslaved West Africans, many taken from rice-growing regions for their skill, cooked the one-pot rice they knew in Louisiana; Spanish paella is jambalaya's other famous cousin.

Which chef succeeded Paul Prudhomme at the stoves of Commander's Palace in New Orleans?

Emeril Lagasse. The future face of New Orleans cooking is a Massachusetts native who turned down a music-college scholarship as a percussionist to go to cooking school instead.

Which cooking technique, often taken for traditional Cajun, did Paul Prudhomme actually invent?

Blackening. His peppery blackened redfish set off such a craze in the 1980s that the fish was badly overfished and Louisiana banned commercial catches of it.

The K in K-Paul's, Paul Prudhomme's famous New Orleans restaurant, stood for whom?

His wife, K Hinrichs, who gave the place its initial. It took no reservations or credit cards, yet was an instant hit, with lines stretching down the block.

Which NFL broadcaster made the turducken a Thanksgiving TV fixture?

John Madden. Handed his first one in the booth at a Saints game with no plate or cutlery, he ate the three-bird roast with his hands, then took to ordering them for his crew at Thanksgiving.

Viet-Cajun crawfish restaurants began opening around 2000 in which Texas city?

Houston. Vietnamese families who had settled along the Gulf opened crawfish houses there and added a step no Louisiana boil had: tossing the cooked shellfish in a garlicky sauce.

At a crawfish boil, newcomers are jokingly warned off eating which crawfish?

The ones with straight tails, said to have been dead before they hit the pot. LSU researchers who tested the lore found dead and live crawfish curl alike; a straight tail may just mean a crowded pot.

What is a boucherie?

A communal hog slaughter and feast. Before refrigeration no family could eat a whole hog before it spoiled, so neighbours shared the work and each went home with fresh cuts and boudin.

What does cochon de lait mean?

Suckling pig, literally a 'milk pig' not yet weaned. In Louisiana the phrase also names the party thrown to roast one, and whole towns build festivals around it.

In the rural Courir de Mardi Gras, what do householders traditionally throw to the maskers?

A live chicken. The costumed riders have to chase it down themselves, and by evening it is in the communal gumbo that feeds everyone who gave.

Which nut replaced the almonds of French pralines when the sweet reached New Orleans?

Pecans. The trees were plentiful in Louisiana, and after emancipation Black women known as pralinieres made a living selling the candy from baskets on the city's streets.

Creole cuisine is stereotyped as what kind of cooking, compared with Cajun?

City food. Creole cooks in New Orleans had a port's imported ingredients to hand, while Cajun cooking was the 'country food' of families who hunted, fished and grew what went in the pot.

What kind of business published The Picayune Creole Cook Book in 1900?

Newspaper. The Daily Picayune feared Creole recipes were 'fast disappearing' along with the last of the old Black cooks who knew them, and set out to get them into print.

Red beans and rice is traced to refugees fleeing which uprising?

The Haitian slave revolt. So many refugees from Saint-Domingue, as Haiti was then called, reached New Orleans that they doubled its French-speaking population, and their rice-and-beans dish, diri kole ak pwa, stayed.

Leah Chase's New Orleans restaurant, Dooky Chase's, hosted strategy meetings for leaders of which 1960s movement?

Civil rights. Black and white organisers planned upstairs over her gumbo when sitting down together was against the law, and Disney later modelled Princess Tiana on the chef.

Which roasted root gives New Orleans cafe au lait its dark, bittersweet edge?

Chicory. The roasted root has no caffeine, but it bulks out the brew, so it was used to stretch coffee whenever beans ran short; in New Orleans the taste outlasted the shortages.

What is pain perdu?

French toast. The name means 'lost bread': slices too stale to eat are rescued by a soak in egg custard, then finished in New Orleans with cane syrup or a dusting of powdered sugar.

Calas, a Creole street breakfast, are what?

A rice fritter. Into the early 1900s the 'calas women' of New Orleans carried them through the streets in baskets balanced on their heads, calling 'Belle calas, tout chaud!'

At which New Orleans restaurant was oysters Rockefeller created?

Antoine's. A shortage of French snails pushed Jules Alciatore, the founder's son, to bake local oysters under a bright green sauce instead.

Oysters Rockefeller was named for the tycoon because of what quality?

Its richness. The sauce was judged as rich as John D. Rockefeller, then America's wealthiest man, and its recipe is still a family secret that rival kitchens have only ever guessed at.

Bananas Foster was created in 1951 at which restaurant?

Brennan's. New Orleans was then the main port of entry for Latin American bananas, and owner Owen Brennan wanted a dessert to show them off; he named it for his friend Richard Foster.

Which spirit is flambeed in Bananas Foster?

Dark rum. It is poured over bananas softening in brown sugar and cinnamon and set alight at the table; the flames burn off the alcohol and leave the rum's flavour behind.

What does a 'dressed' po' boy come with?

Lettuce, tomato, pickles and mayo. Yet New Orleans sandwich makers say the bread is what makes a po' boy: a local French loaf, flaky-crisp outside and so soft within it is nearly hollow.

The Martin brothers' po' boy story involves a 1929 strike by which workers?

Streetcar conductors. Bennie and Clovis Martin, ex-conductors themselves, promised the strikers free meals 'till hell freezes', and the story goes that each one who came in was greeted as 'another poor boy'.

The muffuletta, New Orleans's olive-salad sandwich on a sesame loaf, was created by an immigrant from which island?

Sicily. Salvatore Lupo, credited with building the first one at his Central Grocery in 1906, was Sicilian like the loaf itself, and the French Quarter shop has stayed in his family for three generations.

Which bitters are essential to a Sazerac?

Peychaud's. They began in a pharmacy: Antoine Peychaud, a Creole apothecary in the French Quarter, mixed the anise-scented bitters to an old family recipe before bartenders made them their own.

Before rye whiskey took over, the Sazerac was built on which French spirit?

Cognac. In the late 1800s a vine blight wrecked France's vineyards and the supply dried up, so New Orleans bartenders reached for American rye instead.

What is hidden inside a Mardi Gras king cake?

A small plastic baby. Whoever finds it in their slice is 'king' for the day and has to buy the next cake; plastic only took over in the 1960s from the beans and porcelain dolls of older cakes.

In king cake icing, what does the colour green stand for?

Faith. Purple stands for justice and gold for power, but the meanings were an afterthought: Rex proclaimed Carnival's three colours in 1872 and only attached the words twenty years later.

Tabasco sauce is made on which Louisiana salt dome?

Avery Island. Edmund McIlhenny, a banker ruined by the Civil War, planted peppers on his in-laws' plantation there, and his descendants still make the sauce on the same island.

Which 1862 French Market coffee stand is famous for beignets?

Cafe du Monde. Locals long asked for 'coffee and doughnuts' there, not beignets, and the law agrees with them: in 1986 Louisiana named the beignet its official state doughnut.