'La Cuisine Creole'

THRICE lucky is the lover of good food whose library can boast a copy of Lafcadio Hearn’s wonderful cookbook, La Cuisine Creole, one of the best and certainly the rarest of American works on this most fascinating of all subjects. Only two copies, both in poor condition, have turned up at auction in the past quarter of a century. Neither the British Museum nor the Bibliothèque Nationale has the book on its shelves.

Cooking was a minor hobby with Hearn, and he had begun collecting Creole recipes when on the New Orleans Item. He was mainly interested, however, in Creole patois, spoken in Louisiana and throughout the West Indies, and had compiled a Dictionary of Creole Proverbs, with translations in French and English, under the title Gombo Zhebes, meaning ‘Soup of Herbs.’ There was no demand, nor even a market, for any such thing, and one publisher after another turned it down. Finally he appealed to a Mr. Will H. Coleman, whom he had known when working as a newspaper man in New York and who had a bookselling and publishing business in the old Astor House on Broadway.

Coleman wasn’t interested in the Creole Proverbs, but when Hearn mentioned the cookbook he offered to publish Gombo Zhebes if Hearn would let him have his cooking recipes. These were hurriedly put in shape for publication and both books were published in 1885, bound in the same brown cloth, with front covers gilt. La Cuisine Creole has the title in gilt lettering with the capitals in black, a gilt design showing the kind of soup tureen used for serving Gombo, and a base ornament in black with a crab and a crayfish. Gombo Zhebes was published under Hearn’s name, but La Cuisine Creole was put out anonymously, as if it had been a compilation of recipes by the publisher. Indeed it appears under Coleman’s name in the catalogue of the Library of Congress, although correctly listed among Hearn’s works by the New York Public Library and Book Prices Current.

The title page describes La Cuisine Creole as ‘A Collection of Culinary Recipes from leading Chefs and noted Creole housewives, who have made New Orleans famous for its Cuisine.’ The ‘leading Chefs’ were the two Alciatores, one the famous Antoine, whose restaurant on St. Louis Street is still an unsurpassed haven for leisurely dining; the other, the proprietor of the Restaurant de la Louisianne. In those days, Antoine’s was the equal of any eat ing place in Paris, but Oysters à la Rockefeller had not been thought of and the cuisine was exclusively French, in keeping with the somewhat austere dining room that looks just like a Paris restaurant of fifty years ago.

One of Antoine’s specialties was Red Snapper à la Chamhord, which Hearn describes in his chapter on Chefs d’Oeuvre; but it was the other Alciatore, a cousin if my memory serves me, just arrived from Paris, where he had worked with Bignon, who gave him the famous recipe for Queen Victoria’s favorite pea soup. Despite the fact that La Cuisine Creole is chock-full of culinary lore and, in contrast to the average cookbook, written in clear, concise, and delightfully harmonious language, its publication seems to have passed almost without notice, as did a second edition reprinted in New Orleans a few years later.

It is difficult to choose from the 260 pages of hints and recipes, but I have used my copy steadily for more years than I care to remember, and the following are my favorites, the technique merely brought up to date.

First there is the green pea soup said to have been Queen Victoria’s favorite. It may well be so, as Bignon once worked in the kitchens of Buckingham Palace. It is certainly as nice a green pea soup as anyone can wish for. Take two quarts of shelled green peas, a double handful of parsley, four stalks of mint, and a good handful of young spring onions. Have ready two quarts of veal stock made from two pounds of lean veal and a calf’s foot, well strained and clarified. Place this on the fire, and just before it boils throw in the peas, parsley, mint, and onions. Let all boil together, and when well done take them out with a strainer, put in a mortar, and pound well together. Then put them back in the liquor, bring to a boil once more, and run your soup through a fine hair sieve. Reheat, add half a pound of fresh butter and a tablespoonful of sugar. Beat well in the tureen and serve with little cubes of fried bread.

Everyone knows what a vast improvement egg balls are to almost any soup, but especially to clear chicken consommé, tomato, or mock-turtle. Yet few cooks know how to prepare them. Nothing could be easier. You make a paste out of the yolks of four cold hard-boiled eggs and the whites of two raw ones. This paste must be worked till it is absolutely smooth. Make it into balls the size of a small marble, roll them in sifted flour, fry carefully in butter, and drop them into the soup.

The book is full of simple but delicious preparations. An unexpected guest may drop in for luncheon, or you may bring home somebody for a light after-the-theatre supper. Here is a snack that is hard to beat; it is easy to make and unique. Whip the yolk of an egg with a spoonful of milk, set it on the fire to warm, and thicken it with grated ham. Let it simmer a few minutes and spread on hot buttered toast. The addition of a drop of tabasco is an improvement.

Have you ever eaten pork and peaches? In his chapter on sauces and accompaniments, Hearn gives this very striking recipe that I have never Seen in any other cookbook, although I had some 450 of them in my library in Paris. Fried peaches are simply wonderful as a garniture for a roast of pork. All you have to do is to roast a nice piece of pork — a leg with plenty of crackle for preference, but a rib roast or a small shoulder will do almost as well — and, a few minutes before your roast is ready, peel your peaches, cut them in halves, and let them cook in the pork fat. Serve them all round the meat. They are wonderful — so wonderful that you will do well to allow three peaches per person.

Another unusual dish to serve at luncheon, a dish that will keep even experts guessing, is a sugar-cured leg of lamb or mutton. A leg weighing about five or six pounds will do nicely. Carefully remove all skin and superfluous fat, rub it well all over with plenty of brown sugar dry, place it in a deep closefitting dish, and for each pound of sugar add a pint of ordinary red wine and a pint of wine vinegar. Soak the leg well and let it lie in this gooey swTeet pickle three or four days, turning it over morning and evening. When it is wanted, rinse it under cold running water, wipe it very dry, and roast it in a brisk oven. If there is any left over it will make a splendid pie. But you will have a lot of fun when your guests begin to wonder what it is they are eating. One distinguished African traveler assured me it was antelope; at other times I have been complimented on the fine young boar. Cranberry sauce and a purée of chestnuts are the proper garniture.

Here is another luxury dish that Hearn describes as ‘a good substitute for oysters during the hot season ‘ — fritters made from grated corn. Boil a dozen ears of young sweet corn, and when cool grate enough to make a pint. Beat three eggs with a cup of milk or cream, — by all means cream, if you have it, — add your pint of grated corn, dredge in just enough flour to make a batter that will drop from a spoon, salt and pepper to taste. Beat your batter very hard — it must be absolutely smooth — and then drop into boiling lard one spoonful at a time. No one who has not tried these can believe how different they are from ordinary corn fritters. They may be cooked three or four at a time in melted butter in an ordinary frying pan.

Perhaps the most unusual of the corn recipes is the following. Melt a cupful of lard in a frying pan, and when it is hot, but not sizzling, pour in a pint of sliced okra. Let it cook very gently. Then add a pint and a half of sweet corn cut from the cob and allow it to simmer with the okra until thoroughly cooked. Pour off some of the fat, dredge in a little flour, stir well, adding half a cup of thick cream, pepper and salt to taste, and serve hot.

And now for Red Snapper àa la Chambord. Clean your fish and be careful not to damage it. Replace the roe. Take off the scales and lightly raise the skin on one side, and lard it with bacon from fin to tail. Put it in a pan and moisten with white wine. Add salt, pepper, parsley, six bay leaves, some thyme, sliced onions, and three cloves. Cover the head with strips of bacon and place in the oven, covering the fish kettle with sheets of foolscap paper and letting it simmer for one hour. When about to serve, drain it and put it on a platter, garnish it all round with forcemeat balls, glazed sweetbreads, crabmeat croquettes, chicken livers, truffles, cock’s combs and cock’s ‘kidneys.’ Strain the sauce through a hair sieve and put into a pan two spoonfuls of sauce espagnole and two spoonfuls of the sauce. Use this to glacé your fish, which must be nicely browned. Pour the rest of the sauce around the fish and serve.

One cannot help being struck by the simplicity of these recipes, but simplicity does not preclude distinction, as these potato puffs, to serve with any roast, will show. Boil seven or eight potatoes, mash them well, and add two heaping tablespoonfuls of butter, a cup of milk, and two well-beaten eggs. Beat this mixture till your arm aches, pour it into small deep moulds which should be not more than two-thirds full, and bake in a moderate oven. The moulds should, of course, be buttered right to the top.

When dinner is over, after coffee has been served, turn down the lights and bring in the grand brulé, placing it in the centre of the table, surrounded by flowers. Light a match and, ‘after allowing the sulphur to burn entirely off,’ apply it to the brulé, which, as it burns, will shed its weird light upon the faces of the company. As Hearn says, ‘the stillness that follows gives an opportunity for thoughts that break out in ripples of laughter and pave the way for the exhilaration that is to come.’ To make the brule you pour into a silver bowl two large wineglassfuls of French brandy, one half wineglassful of kirsch, one half wineglassful of maraschino, a small quantity of cinnamon and allspice. Put in about ten cubes of cane sugar, and when they are saturated take them out with a ladle and cover them with brandy. Ignite and return to the bowl, which should be allowed to burn about fifteen minutes. The recipe serves five people.

The petit brulé makes perhaps an even more striking end to a meal, as one is placed in front of every guest. Take an ordinary rather thick-skinned orange. Cut through the peel entirely round the orange, like the line of the equator. Pass the handle of a spoon between the pulp and the peel and gradually separate the peel so as to form a cup. Treat the other half peel in the same way, and you will be able to stand the orange on one cup and in the other place two lumps of sugar and a trace of cinnamon, and fill with good brandy. Ignite the brandy, and when burned out it will be found to have a delicious flavor imparted by the skin of the orange.

HENRY NOBLE HALL