The Creole Cookbook

Note: This edition of The Creole Cookbook has been updated to included Metric equivalents.


The setting and the home of Creole cooking is southern Louisiana—lovely, romantic region where the Mississippi lingers in a thousand bayous before completing its rendezvous with the sea. The graceful city of New Orleans, charming, gay, old in history and young in spirit, crowns the last great curve of the river. In this beneficent region nature is lavish with her gifts. Food from sea and stream and rich, fruitful land is plentiful, and generations of inspired cooks in and around the Crescent City have used it to create the most distinguished cuisine in America.


The mother of Creole cooking is French, its father Spanish, and in the rearing of the prodigy it is possible to discern the tutelage of Indians and the vivid, magic touch of Africans, whose lively genius was expended in the kitchen. Creole is not the firebrand food that often develops in hot climates. Its distinguishing characteristic is a restrained piquancy, a truly provocative quality that invites and delights, and baffles—until one has been let in on the secret. And the secret of Creole, as of so many great styles of cooking, is herbs and seasonings, wisely and artfully used to confer a bouquet on the dish to which they are mated.


To the discriminating lover of good food New Orleans with its Creole tradition is a mecca. Since the pilgrimage is not always possible, even for the most devoted, this book offers you easy passage to the magic art of Creole cooking.