New Orleans Cuisine: Fourteen Signature Dishes and Their Histories

DAUBE GLAC

73 daube glacée Susan Tucker “Daube Froide à la Créole has only to be tried once to be repeated,” proclaimed the authors of The Picayune’s Creole Cook Book in 1901. The Picayune’s boast is echoed throughout many later New Orleans cookbooks. Some printed descriptions, however, are not so uniformly pleasing and are not, to the early twenty-first-century palate, always tempting. Peter Feibleman writes of the same dish, daube glacée, as “chopped sliced meats, cooked with herbs, covered with a delicate brown gelatin extracted from knuckles and bones—not from a packet—and set to chill in individual molds the day before.” When asked to explain it, New Orleanians often liken it to hogshead cheese, not a name with necessarily pleasant connotations. Some people think daube glacée is more akin to beef aspic, albeit a dressedup version.1 Overall,New Orleanians persist in cherishing its place as one of the premier dishes of private elegance and celebration, and some even take a bit of pleasure in the fact that outsiders find it so unappetizing. This most iconic of the meat dishes remains more private than public in its serving and consumption , more at home on the brunch, luncheon, and cocktail table than elsewhere. A good understanding of daube glacée starts with the opinion that meat in New Orleans has a rich history, especially surprising since locals and visitors alike think of the city as a seafood town.Historian and restaurant critic Richard Collin conceded in the 1970s that the city had “some excellent steak and beef restaurants,” and journalist Brett Anderson pointed to a“fairly rich hamburger history” in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Overall, the tradition of food here is enriched by the history of the city markets’butchers. Many of these 1. We have chosen to use this French spelling of daube glacée, with the feminine ending. New Orleanians use this spelling interchangeably with daube glacé and daube glace. Daube glaceé is also called daube Creole or Daube Froide à la Créole. daube glacée 74 men came originally from the region of Gascony in France. These were the men who sold the veal shanks and pig’s knuckles needed to create the gelatin for daube glacée. Transplanted Frenchmen and their descendants, they monopolized the butcher business of the city well into the twentieth century, though the Spanish and German butchers also added their expertise to the history of meat in the city. Hattie Horner, who visited New Orleans during the 1884–1885 World’s Cotton Exposition, was impressed with the meat vendors at the French Market : “By and by I worked my way to the first opening on the left, and going in found that I was in the first of the five great divisions—the meat-market. Around every pillar that helps to support the roof, wide stands are built. Meats of all description, fresh and nicely cut, are displayed, and here the noble butcher, to the number of hundreds, howls in his own particular language the universal virtues of his own particular meats.” Because the city’s butchers continued offering a wide variety, meat dishes remain associated with some of the same traditions that greeted travelers in the 1880s. Grillades deserve mention, if only because they appear on so many brunch menus of the city. Still popular in the late twentieth and early twenty- first centuries, grillades, like much else in this book, began life as a poor family dish. For this preparation, the inferior pieces of meat could be cut into squares or strips, and a gravy could be made. Today grillades are most often made from the round steak of veal or beef, although some cooks use pork. A roux is made and the slightly pounded pieces of meat, along with seasonings of garlic and onion, are browned. In New Orleans, tomatoes and other seasonings are added next; in the countryside, tomatoes are optional. Grillades are served most often with grits, but also with rice,or even beside various bean dishes. They are hearty fare,beloved for their rich and pungent flavors and textures.And they are served in the most modest of homes and the fanciest restaurants. They are another of the city’s foods that cross many boundaries. Any discussion of Creole meats should also mention bouilli, for even more than daube glacée and grillades, this dish appeared on the city’s early menus . Today, bouilli is...