by Jon Laiche
Sister Stanislaus {Madeliene Hachard} writes of large quantities of game being supplied to the Ursuline convent by hunters, including deer, rabbit, bear, squirrels, wild fowl, and “wild” cattle or buffalo. Domestic beef, pork, and poultry were supplied to the colonists by the farms of the German Coast as well as their own backyards and the plantations surrounding the city.
While professional hunters ranged far and wide through the Mississippi Valley to supply Louisiana and New Orleans with meat and skins, there was plenty of game (and seafood) to be had a short walk from the capital city. Surrounding New Orleans, and all the way upriver to Baton Rouge, was La Ciprière, the cypress/palmetto swamp which continues, to this day, to permeate the landscape. The dominant flora were the ancient cypress, towering hundreds of feet high, their “knees” sticking out of the mud and water for yards around their base. These were interspersed with the deep rooted palmetto, whose broad fans provided shelter from the rain, either under the palm itself or as roofs on everyone's first shelters from the meanest Native to the colonial governor.
Over the years as the city grew, lots were cleared, and houses, barracks, and warehouses were built, and the ciprière was pushed back. Up and down the river nearby, farms, and later plantations, were begun. Fields were cultivated and planted in rice, tobacco, and indigo, along with vegetable gardens, all of which made similar inroads into the swamp. But even today, the ciprière stays, and if the land is not maintained, it returns. Even so, as a food resource the Ciprière was filled with game and waterfowl, with seafood, crawfish, and crabs. Along with streams and lakes to facilitate travel, the cypress swamp provided food and shelter to any pioneering spirit. It was a regular haven for runaway slaves, vagabonds, and other free spirits. Yet even these became regular food suppliers to the colony.
Daniel Usner, in what has become the standard treatise on the economy of the Louisiana colony, provides us with some interesting insights into the place of hunting activities within the French Louisiana food chain.
“By 1708, when the colony of Louisiana numbered fewer than 300 people, Indians in the vicinity of Mobile regularly exchanged meat (game) and grain for firearms and gunpowder. For fourteen deer carried to Fort St. Louis in 1710, an Indian hunter could acquire his first musket.” p. 193.
“The Superior Council assumed responsibility for fixing the price of basic food items, ordering on September 27, 1721, “That no venison shall be sold in the future at a price above 16 livres for an entire deer, eight livres for a half and four livres for a quarter. “ According to a fuller tariff issued the following year, buffalo beef was set at eight sous per pound… “ p. 195-6.
“France treated Louisiana as an importer of flour, alcohol, and a few more luxurious foodstuffs, but supply lines were too tenuous and shipments always too small or spoiled for colonists to rely on… “ p.198
(Author’s note) Could the “luxurious foodstuffs” mentioned possibly be the spices, herbs, and other luxury ingredients from France?
“But food is never simply an object of exchange; it is also a means of exchange. By trading in particular food items, Indians, Africans, and Europeans interacted closely and influenced each other culturally. Colonies were ‘dietary frontiers’, as Ferdinand Braudel has observed, where ‘eating other people’s bread’ involved both profound change and stubborn conflict. Production and peddling of foodstuffs in small quantities constituted a sphere of social interaction that generated a unique creole diet in North America while serving as a source of economic autonomy for Indians, settlers, and slaves in the18th-century lower Mississippi Valley.” p. 192.
As will be shown in the next chapter, residents of French New Orleans and lower Louisiana in the eighteenth century had ample food resources available to them. Native foodstuffs from the hunt, the bounty of Louisiana forests and waters, produce from dozens (if not hundreds) of kitchen gardens, both in and out of the city, imported items from France, from the Illinois country, and especially the Mexican/Caribbean (legal and illegal) trade routes supplied the colony and capital with lots of food. I hasten to add that there were occasional shortages of certain items (most mentioned are wheat flour, salt, and wine), but even these could be overcome with Native resources.
See also the blog entry of August 7, 2012,
“Hypothesis: They Had To Eat” http://wp.me/p2luJc-1T
It has often been said in local cookbooks and culinary discussions that the essence of Creole cuisine is the ingenious blending of French techniques and styles to local ingredients. Herein I hope to have shown that this is exactly what the early citizens of this city on the crescent have been doing from the very beginnings of New Orleans.
Eighteen
A SMUGGLERS PARADISE
Tante Suzanne and Frére Gerard sat down on the levee with their cans of steaming coffee. She opened her aprons to show her companion the treasures hidden therein. Inside were five elongated fruits of red and green color, a half-dozen precious brown nuts, and a handful of little dried out black pods.”Where did those come from!?” exclaimed Gerard. “Shush”, Tante Suzanne said, “you want the whole levee to hear you?”
Gerard had met Suzanne at the levee market a few years earlier. Like himself she was responsible for running the kitchen and the potager for a large family at a nearby home in the city. Although her mother had been African and a slave at the time of her birth, she herself was freeborn. All of her brothers and sisters were freeborn as well, due to an agreement between her mother and the Frenchman she worked for. In fact, before she was 10 years old her mother was also freed by her French owner. Nevertheless, free mother and children alike, had followed Monsieur Barré from San Domingue to Mobile in the early 1700s. As those early years in Louisiana passed by, Monsieur Barré had established a thriving farm and cattle ranch a few miles up the river from the city on the bay.
By her early teens, Suzanne had demonstrated an affinity for the hearth and the garden. By the time she was 20 she was the cook at the big house on the farm. A few years later her father died and Suzanne was forced to consider her options because of her lascivious half-brother Louis. A tall and handsome woman, Suzanne was often forced into uncomfortable positions as she, Louis, and the others were growing up. He would playfully grab her or hold her against a tree making indecent remarks. Now that he had inherited his father’s farm and ranch, things were getting a little too serious for Suzanne.
A few years prior to this, when Governor Bienville had decided to build the new colonial capital at New Orleans about 150 miles west of Mobile, her brother Romulus had decided to go along and help settle the city. As Suzanne’s talents had manifested themselves in the kitchen, so her brother’s had shown up in the stable yards. With his “horse sense” and seemingly natural abilities to handle horses, Romulus quickly found work in a large household of a rich officer in New Orleans. Suzanne decided to move to New Orleans herself and within a few short months she established herself with the same family in their kitchen and gardens. While settling into her new city and workspaces, she often saw this interesting looking fellow at the markets in town seeming to be a bit out of place. One day, while examining some freshly caught catfish and shrimp being offered by a riverman, she bumped into this fellow, and a conversation began as to how to best prepare these gifts of the Great River.
Over the next few seasons Frére Gerard and Suzanne became fast friends, sharing cups of coffee on the levee along with their recipes, gardening ideas, and methods of running kitchens. On this day at the levee market, Suzanne, called Tante by her household family, had come across one of her acquaintances from the bayous and swamps west of the city. This area has long been a thriving depot for boats and pirogues coming up from Barataria Bay with fabrics and foodstuffs, whose origins in the busy ports of the Caribbean islands and cities along the Gulf Coast from Veracruz to Pensacola, were not officially sanctioned by the New Orleans Superior Council. This is
why the spices were hidden in her apron. Now to be shared with her close friend Gerard were so
me wonderful chili peppers, nutmegs, and cloves.
Gerard gratefully accepted a few of the chili peppers, two of the nutmegs, but left the cloves for Suzanne this time around. On her part, Suzanne was already thinking of the wonderful puddings and desserts she was planning to make for her household’s next Sunday dinner.
Rice Pudding:
1 cup long grain rice
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon butter
1 quart whole milk
6 large eggs
3/4 cup sugar
4 teaspoons orange rind, finely chopped
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon nutmeg, freshly grated
3/4 teaspoon ginger, freshly grated
Technique:
In a pot put the rice in 2 cups of cold water with salt and butter added bring to a boil over high heat. Stir once with fork, cover tightly, lower heat to low and cook for precisely 15 minutes without lifting cover. After 15 minutes, remove the pan from the heat, uncover and stir with fork to fluff rice. Return the pan to the heat, add milk and bring slowly to a boil, stirring frequently. In a bowl whisk the eggs and sugar together until a light lemon color is seen. Add the chopped orange rind and the sugar and egg mixture to the boiling custard. Cook over low heat for about 5 minutes until rice is very soft and mixture begins to thicken. Add vanilla, nutmeg, and ginger and stir to blend, remove from heat. Pour cooked mixture
into a shallow baking dish about 1 1/2 inches high and allow to cool at room temperature.
When cooled cover tightly and place in a cool spot.
Serve cold with a little cinnamon sprinkled on top.
Peach Spice Pie:
First prepare a pie shell. Then gather
8 or 10 peaches
1 cup sugar
½ cup sour cream
1 spoon sugar
½ small spoon grated ginger
¼ cup wheat flour
2 eggs
1 spoon vanilla
Skin, slice and place all the peaches in the pie shell. Mix everything else together in a bowl and pour over the peaches. Bake in a hot oven for 30 minutes. While the pie cooks gather together:
½ cup of flour
¾ cup sugar
1 cup chopped pecans
½ cup chopped currants (or raisins)
1 small spoon cinnamon
½ cup cubed cold butter
Mix everything together, take the pie out of the oven, pour over the baked peaches, bake some more for 15 to 20 minutes. Cool.
A HISTORICAL ADDENDUM
smuggle |ˈsməgəl|verb [ with obj. ]move (goods) illegally into or out of a country: smuggling cigarettes from Gibraltar | (as noun smuggling) : cocaine smuggling has increased.
In the 18th Century, in the Western Hemisphere, and specifically in the so-called “Atlantic World”, smuggling was a way of life. The following shows that, for all intents and purposes, it was normal in the Atlantic marketplaces, including the market at New Orleans. Furthermore, the market at New Orleans included the spices, vegetables, and herbs that were commonly found in the gardens and marketplaces of Mexico, Europe, the Mediterranean, Africa, and South America. These (usually illicit) foodstuffs, combined with the victuals available in Louisiana through normal food channels; i.e. meats, grains, oils, fruits and vegetables, etc, were blended together to create the foundation of Louisiana Creole Cuisine.
New Orleans sits at the geographical apex of the colonial trade networks of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, it was the link between these networks and the North American continent. It served as the exchange depot between the continent and the Atlantic empires of Spain, France, and the Netherlands ( and to a limited extent, the British, as well). When combined with the history, legends and stories of the piratical activity of the Lafitte brothers at the turn of the nineteenth century, these facts would seem to indicate that the New Orleans market was a smuggling capital of the Gulf/Caribbean region throughout the 1700's. Central to this “culinary history” is whether or not there is a case for smuggling in general, and more specifically, of foodstuffs into and out of the New Orleans market. The time frame is limited to the French colonial period, officially 1718 to 1763 in New Orleans itself, but extended to 1699 to 1770 and to the lower Louisiana colony. The verifiable and the probable contents of a typical Creole pantry in French New Orleans rests on the outcome of this question.
As will be shown, there are numerous foodstuffs and ingredients that can be verified in the kitchens of the colonial capital. Available historical records are replete with reference to various protein sources (meats, fish, eggs, nuts, cheese), and grains (maize, rice, wheat flour, etc.), and fruit (oranges, pineapple, grapes, plums). They are less helpful in referring to vegetables which they tend not to specify, referring to them as generic “vegetables”. And even less so to herbs and spices – which are perhaps the defining flavors of New Orleans' cuisine. Items of specific interest in this study are Tomatoes, Pepper varieties, clarification of garden vegetables, and spices available through world trade.
Without question, the most famous smugglers/pirates in Louisiana history were the Lafitte brothers, Pierre and Jean. While certainly part of the history of French Louisiana, their activity in Barataria, Lafourche, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans post-dates the time frame of this work. Nevertheless, while the brothers Lafitte brought notoriety, a certain acceptance, economic and organizational refinement, and great profitability to Gulf Coast piracy and smuggling, they did not invent it. They inherited it. What they inherited is the matter under consideration here. A brief excerpt from Lyle Saxon’s “Lafitte, the Pirate” best sums up this legacy.
“For 50 years before Lafitte saw it {in 1810} men and women had been living on Grand Isle and there were a cluster of houses half buried in the rank undergrowth.
Smuggling was only a part of the Islanders lives, for they were also trappers and fisherman, their luggers made the long journey to the New Orleans market over and over again, carrying loads of fish and shrimp and oysters. They knew these curving bayous as the average city dweller knows the streets between his home and his office. The reedy labyrinths of Barataria held no mysteries for them. They had learned 100 hiding places for themselves and their boats in the vicinity of the city and when their luggers were loaded with contraband goods rather than with fish, they felt safe from pursuit or attack.
For nearly 50 years than they had pursued their dual interests {smuggling and fishing} . . . it was an accepted thing . . . “
(pp. 40-41)
“The pirate’s vessels' brought in shipload after shipload of captured slaves to the harbor at Barataria; and the terrified savages ladened with chains, were dragged into the barracoon.
Prior to 1810, . . . the smugglers had bought their slaves from Cuban slave traders. But under Lafitte's regime a simpler and more direct method of supply was arranged. Nowadays the ships from Barataria went well armed and well manned. They lay in wait off the Cuban coasts, and intercepted the slave ships as they came from Africa. Instead of buying the cargoes they stole them, and frequently burnt or scuttled the ships. Or sometimes the vessel with its cargo, but oddly empty of crew, was brought back to Grande Terre. And all of this in the name of Spanish prizes.
This kind of “purchase”- as the corsairs called it - had double advantage: the slaves cost nothing, and the long voyage to Africa was a eliminated. Then to, with Lafitte's powerful connections in New Orleans, the slaves were easily sold.
Other richly laden prize vessels were brought into port: merchantmen, their holds filled with silks and spices from India . . . At one time Lafitte's storehouse was filled with goods of English manufacture. All this of course from Spanish vessels . . . or so it was said. “
(p. 46)
Saxon, Lyle. Lafitte the Pirate.
(see bibliography at http://1718neworleans.com)
Two items of note may be drawn from this description. First, the dating of “organized” smuggling in the New
Orleans region back to at least 1760. Second, the mention of specific merchandise, other than slaves, which were the stock of the smugglers, namely “holds filled with silks and spices from India”. The Lafitte brothers not
only assumed control over most of SE Louisiana’s smuggling activities, more importantly they came into the acquired knowledge of decades of exploration and exploitation of the watery pathways and passes to and from New Orleans and the Gulf. Legitimate trade and travel passed up the Mississippi from the government post at the Balize to the city and beyond as well as the now established passage through Lake Pontchartrain and Bayou Ste. Jean to the city’s back doors. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Carondelet Canal allowed water passage for trade and travel up to the walls of the city. The Lafittes’ predecessors meanwhile, had during the eighteenth century, established tradeways beyond the ken of the French or Spanish authorities from the islands of Barataria Bay and the mouths of Bayou LaFourche. Traveling up LaFourche from the Gulf to its Mississippi source at Lafourche-des-Chitimachas (now Donaldsonville, LA) was relatively a straight shot. There had been a settlement there since before the arrival of the French in 1699. Europeans moved in in the 1750’s and ’60’s. The other passage, up through the swamps from Barataria Bay to the river bank opposite today’s Audubon Park was somewhat more tricky.