The Picayune's Creole Cook Book - Couverture souple

Picayune, Picayune

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0486423247 ISBN 13 : 9780486423241

Editeur : Dover Publications Inc., 2003

Synopsis

One of the world's most unusual and exciting cooking styles, New Orleans Creole cookery melds a fantastic array of influences: Spanish spices, tropical fruits from Africa, native Choctaw Indian gumbos, and most of all, a panoply of French styles, from the haute cuisine of Paris to the hearty fare of Provence.
Assembled at the turn of the twentieth century by a Crescent City newspaper, The Picayune, this volume is the bible of many a Louisiana cook and a delight to gourmets everywhere. Hundreds of enticing recipes include fine soups and gumbos, seafoods, all manner of meats, rice dishes and jambalayas, cakes and pastries, fruit drinks, French breads, and many other delectable dishes. A wealth of introductory material explains the traditional French manner of preparing foods, and a practical selection of full menus features suggestions for both everyday and festive meals.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

An excerpt from the PREFACE:

The Picayune Creole Cook Book, of which this (the sixth) is a revised and very carefully prepared edition, is more than a cook book. It is, in fact the record of a school of cookery, the most savory and yet the most economical ever devised. in making that dual claim we are not speaking idly and boastingly, but have valid arguments to support both contentions.

It long has been recognized throughout the world that the cuisine of France, under the later Louis and the Empire, reached a perfection of refinement due not alone to a French genius for that art, but because gastronomy was so highly regarded there that it drew the best from all parts of the world. Thus we see some of the most typically French "plats" to have had their origin in Poland, ltaly, Spain and Russia, though undoubtedly refined and improved from passing through the hands of the French masters. it was this French school of culinary art that supplied the foundation, the general basis for the Creole cuisine.

It must be remembered that many of the French settlers in La Louisiane were the aristocratic "émigrés," who brought with them the highest refinement of gastronomic culture, while at the same time there came many peasants with their simple though delicious "pot au feu" and "grillades." But, in the evolution of a Creole cuisine, to this double element of French cookery there came an infiltration of Spanish "arte de componer las viandas" because of the considerable element of Iberian population that settled in Louisiana during the Spanish rule. This added a somewhat broader, stronger seasoning, and a further admixture came from our proximity to the pepper-loving tropics. Thus we find our Creole cookery departing somewhat from its French origins; but there were other and still more important changes that could not fail to come because of our isolation and because of the difference in the staple culinary materials here and in Europe.

One of the conspicuous differences of this kind was due to our waters that teemed with fish, scale-fish and shell fish, and many varieties of marine food that were either unobtainable in France or were there so rare as to have become no staple item of the menu. in the wild New World sea food was easiest and safest to catch. it might even be captured by the women folks while the men were on sterner business, and with such new and delicious materials to experiment with, the inventiveness of the pioneers went to work and devised new and delicious combinations of shrimps, crabs and crawfish, as well as of the almost limitless varieties of the finny tribes. There were the reliable "grognards"—we call them croakers. Both names are due to the rebellious utterances of the fish when hooked and landed. There were the trouts, white and speckled, so plentiful in Louisiana and Mississippi waters; the delicious sheepshead, with stripes of the broiler ready upon it as it came from the water; the handsome red fish, marked for ready identification by a single black dot beside its tall; and then such aristocrats as the Spanish mackerel—a nobleman indeed beside his plebeian relative, the mackerel of the Atlantic—and, supreme among fish, the delicious pompano. With those and an infinity of oysters at command, it was not to be wondered at that the native chefs wrought marvels of tastiness that have been the envy of many a European "cordon bleu." ...

Lastly, there were the Indians to whom at least one item of Creole cookery, still today fairly indispensable, is due—namely, the "gombo file" Even to the present day that condiment, so unlike all others, is gathered and sold by the remains of the once powerful Choctaws.

With all these new elements added, we find ourselves far away from the original French cuisine, but that school had the force to enclose the New World additions without losing any of its own charms when it became a question of cooking the standard foods....

Présentation de l'éditeur

Published in New Orleans in 1901, this volume in the American Antiquarian Cookbook Collection is widely credited with preserving the rich Creole cooking tradition from extinction. The recipes were gathered directly from the local cooks and housekeepers who had passed them down verbally for generations. 

Published in 1901 in New Orleans, The Picayune’s Creole Cook Book is widely credited with preserving the rich tradition of Creole cooking. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Picayune, a New Orleans newspaper, was determined to save the local cuisine and collected it directly from the cooks and housekeepers who were the first practitioners of the Creole tradition. The book became wildly popular and has had over 15 editions printed throughout the twentieth century. 

 

As stated in the introduction, The Picayune’s Creole Cook Book was published “to assist housekeepers generally to set a dainty and appetizing table at a moderate outlay; to give recipes clearly and accurately with simplicity and exactness” and the recipes blend a fantastic array of influences from French style and Spanish spices to African fruits and Indian gumbos. The recipe list includes classics such as seafoods, gumbos, cakes and pastries, jambalayas, and fruit drinks, along with many other delectable dishes. With its fascinating historical origins and delicious authentic recipes, The Picayune’s Creole Cook Book is truly the bible of the rich Louisiana culinary tradition.

 
This edition of The Picayune’s Creole Cook Book was reproduced by permission from the volume in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded in 1812 by Isaiah Thomas, a Revolutionary War patriot and successful printer and publisher, the society is a research library documenting the lives of Americans from the colonial era through 1876. The society collects, preserves, and makes available as complete a record as possible of the printed materials from the early American experience. The cookbook collection comprises approximately 1,100 volumes.     

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Dover Publications Inc.
• Date d'édition: 2003
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0486423247
• ISBN 13: 9780486423241
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 464
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Soc. Agr. La Raia Ss; http://www.la-raia.it; ; Strada Monterotondo, 79; Novi Ligure; 15067; Italie