Cajun and Creole French Cooking Compared
Two Distinct Refugee Groups Influence Louisiana Cuisine
Nov 15, 2009
To the outsider, Cajun and Creole cuisine may seem more alike than than different. Both Cajun and Creole immigrants were originally were refugees from other French colonies. Is there a real difference in their cuisines? That’s a question that could start a spicy argument in many a restaurant or bar across Louisiana.
Celebrity chefs Paul Prudhomme and Emeril Lagasse have both blended the two cuisines, adding to the confusion. One measure of the blurring of distinctions can be illustrated by the number of listings (~950,000) for recipes a Google search will find dubbed as “Cajun-Creole” or “Creole-Cajun”.
Similarities in Cajun French and Creole French Cuisines
- Both cuisines adapted their French culinary backgrounds to largely similar local ingredients.
- Both cuisines extensively employ the “Holy Trinity” of celery, onions and bell peppers. Note the echo of mirepoix, the classical French cuisine’s trinity of celery, onion and carrots.
- Roux, a browned mixture of flour and fat or oil, is used in both cuisines, though with differences, as both a thickener and flavoring agent.
- Both cuisines glorify the thick soupy stew gumbo, thickened either with filé powder (a product of ground dried sassafras leaves, a distinctly Native American contribution to the cuisines, a learning from Choctaw Indians) or okra (a mucilaginous vegetable of African origin popular throughout the south), but rarely both.
Differences between Cajun French and Creole French Cuisines
- In the early days, the distinction in cuisines was one of social class.
- Creole cooking is the outgrowth of the style of life and cooking that developed from aristocratic French expatriates in New Orleans and the plantations along the Mississippi.
- Cajun cooking tended to be more rustic, heartier concoctions, needed by a people who ate to live, to stave off starvation. Well-to-do Creoles lived to eat, with lighter dishes cooked by their slaves or other staff.
- Cajun dishes are more often one-pot meals originally cooked in a large cast-iron pot over an open fire. Creole meals tended to consist of several comparatively lighter more delicate courses including more desserts and baked goods. Even dishes that appear in both cuisines would have the difference that they would be one-dish meals for Cajuns, but only one course of more extensive Creole menus.
- Both cuisines incorporate heat from hot peppers, but Cajun tends to be spicier.
- Said to be the influence of Italian or Spanish elements, Creole recipes included tomatoes. Cajun recipes did not.
- Creole cooking employs sauces based on butter and cream. The fat content in Cajun dishes tends to be pork fat. While roux is important in both cuisines, Creoles use butter to create a lighter roux, pork fat allows Cajun roux to be much darker where a butter would have burnt.
- More so than the isolated Cajuns, Creoles as a cultural group assimilated for the most part into the American melting pot over the last one hundred years or so. Creole cuisine survives, less from cultural Creoles than from restaurants that continue the traditions.
How did these two French immigrant populations bring such distinct cuisines to Louisiana? See the “Origins of Cajun & Creole French Cooking” to see how each group’s history determined many of the differences in their cuisines.
Go here for a recipe for Red Beans and Andouille Sausage Soup.
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