La Cuisine Creole

Lafcadio Hearn’s La Cuisine Creole is the first Creole cookbook, one of the great rare classics of the culture. Among its recipes, collected “”from leading chefs and noted Creole housewives,”” are gumbos with oysters, okra, and shrimp; “”grenouilles frites”” or fried frogs; plum, sweet potato, and gingerbread pudding; and a number of beverages, several of which use absinthe as the main ingredient. Lafcadio Hearn spent close to a dozen years in New Orleans, starting in 1877. During that time, his writings significantly shaped the impressions, myths, and symbols of the Crescent City, many of which live on to this day. Although Hearn was born in Greece in 1850, he chronicled Creole culture and the natural and domestic worlds of New Orleans – most notably its language and cuisine – as if he were born and raised there. Later in life, he became a citizen of Japan and is considered by the Japanese to be one of the greatest Japanese writers of his time.

First edition of the first published book on this culinary tradition, “an invaluable record of the history of Creole food, New Orleans, and Louisiana” (John T. Edge). Subtitled “a collection of culinary recipes from leading chefs and noted Creole housewives, who have made New Orleans famous for its cuisine,” this book includes some of the earliest printed recipes for classics of the area’s food, including jambalaya and gumbos, with characteristic ingredients like okra and crayfish. But even more, it was an important cultural document of the vibrantly heterogeneous culture: “In LA CUISINE CREOLE Hearn located food at the core of a people’s culture. Its publication marked the beginning of a wave of nineteenth-century cookery books that preserved and popularized singular cuisines in their historical place” (Bruce Kraig).