Cajun Foodways

Introduction: Louisiana's Cajuns

I N T R O D U C T I O N Louisiana's Cajuns During the 1980$ Cajun food was a favorite topic of food critics and travel writers. Countless magazine and newspaper articles featured Cajun cooking, and restaurants in New York, Los Angeles, and other cities far from south Louisiana's Cajun country served Cajun-style food to eager customers. Cajun cooking was the subject of television talk shows, cooking classes, mail-order catalogs, specialty food shops, cookbooks, and how-to video tapes. New "gourmet" food products, such as frozen Cajun entrees and prepared Cajun seasoning powders, appeared on supermarket shelves. Cajun food became firmly established as an ethnic cuisine, far from its Louisiana homeland. Today Americans order dishes called "Cajun" from the menus of elegant restaurants, family-style eateries ,, and fast-food outlets. The nationwide popularity of Cajun food continues to grow, despite announcements by food critics in New York and California that Cajun cooking is no longer in fashion (Bourg 1985; Cutler 1989). Cajun food has become a product that can be marketed successfully to consumers outside Louisiana. But for Cajuns, this food is much more than a marketable product or a national fad: it is important for reasons beyond its enticing flavors and nutritional value. By eating (or not eating) certain foods, people make a statement about their ethnic affiliation. But are such foodways merely indicators of eth3 4 Introduction nic identity, or do they also say something about the nature of that identity , about the values and self-image held by members of a group? How do foods and foodways convey such meanings? This book explores the answers to these questions in terms of Cajuns and their food, illustrating a basic tenet of the study of foodways: that food and identity are interconnected symbolically, and that each aids in the understanding of the other (see Brown and Mussell 1984; Farb and Armelagos 1980). Beginning with an overview of Cajun history and a discussion of contemporary Cajun identity, this study provides a description of Cajun foodways and an interpretation of the symbolic aspects of foodways and their role in the expression of ethnic identity. ACADIAN A, PAST AND PRESENT Louisiana has two distinct parts, north and south. North Louisiana includes the northern half of the state and most of the territory of the "Florida" parishes (counties) north of Lake Pontchartrain and east of the Mississippi River. It is populated largely by Anglo-American and AfroAmerican Protestants. North Louisiana has more in common geographically , historically, and culturally with neighboring areas of Mississippi, Arkansas, and Texas than with south Louisiana, and it is readily categorized as part of the larger region of the American South. South Louisiana encompasses the twenty-two parishes in the predominantly Cajun and Afro-French area known as Acadiana, as well as the city of New Orleans, the rim of Lake Pontchartrain, and the Mississippi River delta parishes in extreme southeastern Louisiana. Largely Catholic, south Louisiana is ethnically diverse, although French influence (continental , Acadian, and/or Caribbean) was predominant throughout the colonial era and remains strong in Acadiana. South Louisiana is not typical of the American South; rather, it is in many ways a distinct region that lies south of the South. The physical geography of south Louisiana is unusual compared to that of other regions of the American South. The natural terrain includes four basic types: the prairies of southwestern Louisiana, subdivided into large sections by tree-lined bayous; the marshes of the coastal regions; the relatively elevated and extremely fertile natural levee lands found along the rivers and major bayous; and the swamps located behind the levee lands or elsewhere, including the 5OO,ooo-acre AtchafalayaBasin swamp, Introduction 5 which separates southeastern from southwestern Louisiana. The numerous bayous, rivers, and lakes of the interior, plus i ,500 miles of meandering coastline, have served as avenues of transportation since precolonial times. The warm, humid, semitropical climate allows for long growing seasons, and serious droughts are rare. These physicaland climatic factors have made it possible for south Louisiana to become a major producer of sugar, rice, cotton, corn, soybeans, cattle, oysters, shrimp, crabs, finfish, wildfowl, fur, and lumber, as well as items less prominent in the national economy, such as perique tobacco, Easter lilies, peppers, Spanish moss, crawfish, frogs, and alligator meat and hides. Abundant oil, gas, sulfur, salt, and other mineral reserves are part of the natural wealth of the...