The Lagniappe

Songs, proverbs, and the strange corners of a Creole kitchen

In New Orleans a lagniappe is the little something extra the grocer drops in for free. Célestine Eustis’s 1904 kitchen book is full of it — sheet music between the recipes, a gumbo made “even of an owl,” an eggnog of thirty-two yolks. Each links to where it lives in the book.

1. A cook timed her boiled eggs by hymn: she'd discovered that singing two verses "was exactly the time required to boil an egg" (told of a bishop's farmhouse cook in the introduction).Read it: About the Book
2. The author's definition of gumbo: it can be made of game, poultry, turkey, veal, scraps — "à la rigueur même un hibou" (in a pinch, even an owl).Read it: About the Book
3. "Gombo-mêlé" was Creole slang for any hopelessly complicated tangled affair — the dish was so mixed it became a metaphor.Read it: About the Book
4. The book prints sheet music with its recipes: "Don't be surprised by these few notes of music — it's the spice of the sauce." Kitchen and street songs, in Creole patois.Read it: About the Book·The Songs & Pictures
5. Gottschalk's famous piano pieces "Bamboula" and "Savanne" were written on themes from these very Creole kitchen songs.Read it: The Songs & Pictures
6. The author quotes a wit: hang one bad cook a month, and "perhaps by the end of the year we would manage to have good cooks."Read it: About the Book
7. Kitchen wisdom via a Russian general: "water is so disagreeable in one's boots — imagine what it must be in the stomach!" (against watery cooking).Read it: About the Book
8. The famous Red River turkeys were half-wild and fattened on PECANS.Read it: About the Book
9. Recipe: "Baltimore Style of Making Terrapin Stew Without Terrapin" — rabbit and calf's head doing a turtle impression, simmered two hours a day for two days.Read it: Baltimore Style of Making Terrapin Stew Without Terrapin
10. Mrs. Tanier's Eggnogg: thirty-two egg yolks, thirty-two spoonfuls of sugar, a pint and a half of brandy, Madeira, and two and a half quarts of whipped cream.Read it: "Eggnogg"
11. "Bouillon à la James Madison" — credited to a cook "born in James Madison's family"; starts with "throw in every bone you have."Read it: Bouillon à la James Madison
12. The book's fly killer: milk, raw sugar and ground pepper, simmered — flies "attack it greedily and in a few moments are suffocated." Kitchens stay clear all summer "without the danger of poison."Read it: How to Destroy Flies
13. From the household hints: potato water and cucumber water must be thrown out — "They have been known to poison a dog."Read it: Household Hints
14. "Foods That Steal Flavors": leave celery and cream cheese together in the ice chest and "you won't know which is which by nightfall"; cream shut up with a peach tastes like peach ice cream in two hours.Read it: Foods That Steal Flavors
15. Monkey Pudding, by the author herself: bake the bread pudding "until it looks like an old monkey."Read it: Monkey Pudding
16. Porcupine Pudding: syrup-roasted apples under meringue, stuck all over with almond quills.Read it: Porcupine Pudding
17. Raw Beef Soup (invalid food): chipped beef, water, and four drops of muriatic acid, iced twelve hours, gently warmed, strained — served cold.Read it: Raw Beef Soup
18. The 1898 Press Club banquet menu ran on Creole proverbs: "A cockroach never holds its own before a hen" introduced the Chicken Pâté; "Don't tie up the dog with sausages" introduced the Jambalaya; and "A Creole dinner is not complete without a little suckling pig." It opened with absinthe and anisette.Read it: Menus
19. Explorer De Brazza told the author that on African expeditions the FIRST thing his party planted at any halt was okra.Read it: Okra Hibiscus
20. Gumbo filé is sassafras-leaf powder "prepared by the Indians" — the book tells you to buy it at Park & Tilford's, New York, or Solari's on Chartres Street.Read it: Gumbo Filé
21. Calas: the street cry "Bel calas tout chauds!" — vendors carried the hot rice cakes through New Orleans in wooden bowls balanced on their heads, wrapped in a clean napkin.Read it: Calas·The Songs & Pictures
22. Gofio: parched salted cornmeal carried in a bag — Indian trail food, eaten dry on tramps and hunts.Read it: Gofio
23. Custard Bread ("Uncle John," S.C.): stale bread dipped in cinnamon milk and egg, rolled in brown sugar, fried in butter — French toast, 1904, served with wine sauce.Read it: Custard Bread
24. Household hint, complete: "Eat your bread stale and not fresh."Read it: Household Hints
25. Canvasback duck: split it, broil 12–15 minutes, and "a salad of celery mayonnaise is the proper thing to eat with it"; lose as little of the blood as possible.Read it: Canvasback Duck
26. Ham Fried with Sugar: boiled ham + brown sugar + dry mustard, fried in butter.Read it: Ham Fried with Sugar
27. "How to Make a Lunch with Nothing": the author, arriving to a house with a sick hostess, no cook and "not a thing to eat," built lunch from a mutton bone, two cold potatoes and the garden.Read it: How to Make a Lunch with Nothing, and a Good Soup with What Remains from Breakfast
28. Couche-couche: sweet cornmeal paste scraped from the pot in crusts, "delicious for breakfast with coffee."Read it: Couche Couche
29. Oyster and Peanut Soup — pounded roasted peanuts thickening oyster broth.Read it: Oyster and Peanut Soup
30. The introduction claims no one north of the South could ever cook terrapin — the author's old nurse "turned the other servants out of the kitchen, and performed her kindly incantations alone."Read it: About the Book
31. The introduction on the North: "the frying-pan should be our national emblem… there was not a gridiron for sale" in Marquette or Duluth.Read it: About the Book
32. Un Piti Dine Creole: the whole 1898 menu was printed in Creole patois — "Ravet jamais gagnin raison devont poule."Read it: Menus
33. Hopping John, two ways, both insisting: "Those old-fashioned black pots are the best to use," and never stir rice with a spoon — use a fork.Read it: Hopping John
34. New Orleans snipe: baste it for hours with jelly made of calf's feet and Madeira.Read it: New Orleans Way to Cook Snipe
35. Drip coffee doctrine: Java and Mocha mixed, tepid soak first, then boiling water — "if it is too weak, pour the whole thing over the top again."Read it: How to Make Drip Coffee
36. The préface roll-call of homesick eaters: an Englishman won a heart with a spinach dish; a Russian in Paris can't forget smothered partridges; a New York élégante "was dying of longing to eat dry rice as only the creoles know how to cook it."Read it: About the Book
37. Salade à la Duc de Morny — a salad named for Napoleon III's half-brother sits between cornbread and gumbo.Read it: Index of all 268 entries
38. "Z'Affaire Cabri C'est Pas Z'Affaire Mouton" (goat's business is not sheep's business) — a Creole rhyme printed as a recipe entry.Read it: Z'Affaire Cabri C'est Pas Z'Affaire Mouton
39. The roux sermon: the base of Creole cooking is the roux, and without it "vos plats seraient fadasses" — your dishes would be insipid; the flame is "the triumph of the greasy-spoon cook."Read it: About the Book
40. Aunt Anne's corn-bread measures butter "the size of a hickory nut."Read it: Aunt Anne's Hoecake