More than 14,000 Acadians were deported from Acadia (now the Maritime Provinces of Canada) in the Grand Dérangement of 1755, when they refused to swear allegiance to the British Crown. Eventually, in 1764, Acadians were allowed to return to Acadia, but with such restrictions placed on their freedom by the British that many chose not to go back.
Between 1765 and 1785, many of the exiled Acadians found their way to Louisiana and settled in, marrying into the local population. “Acadian” was corrupted to “Cajun,” and the rest is culinary history!
Cajun cooking is known for the spicy warmth of mixed peppers — quite a different flavour from the savoury herbs of Acadian dishes, many of which are still enjoyed among the French-speaking residents of eastern Canada, and of the bordering state of Maine — and yet, the two cuisines are clearly connected in spirit as well as in history.
The indigenous cuisine of Acadia is a distant relative of French home cooking, born of necessity and created from what was naturally available. Roast porcupine or seal-fat cookies may not be to every modern diner’s taste, but the few recipes of this nature in A Taste of Acadie hint at the ingenuity of women who fed their families with what the land provided. Most of the recipes, however, use ingredients beloved of today’s cooks. Here you’ll find fricot, a wonder of the Acadian imagination, pot en pot, a traditional Sunday dinner sometimes called grosse soupe, and dozens of meat pies, variations on pâté à la viande. There’s also pâté à la rapure, with a crust made of grated potatoes, and the popular poutine rapée, one of the few French dishes to survive the transition to the New World, although certainly not in its original form. For those with a sweet tooth… recipes that use maple syrup and fresh wild berries, from poutine à trou, a delectable mixture of apples, cranberries and nuts in a rich pastry purse, to the cheekily named pets de soeurs (nun’s farts), a biscuit with a puckered middle and a saucy Acadian name.
When the Acadian people first settled in North America, in the very early 1600s, they adapted their traditional diet to take advantage of the food that was readily available in their new home. Similarly, in exile, they lived off the land (and sea) to a great extent. As noted, the roots of Acadian cooking are found in the peasant food of old rural France, commonly based on poultry, pork and game cooked together with vegetables in a savoury sauce or gravy. Many of the definitive Acadian dishes, such as fricot à la poule (a type of chicken and potato stew, flavoured with summer savoury), are designed to be cooked in one pot, country style.
Acadians were farmers who lived off the land, creating hearty meals with the ingredients that were at hand and wasting very little. As the Acadians moved south and settled in the Acadiana region of Louisiana, their cuisine evolved to include the natural resources of their new home — crawfish and shrimp in place of the lobsters of the North Altantic waters, for example, and catfish or redfish in place of Acadia’s cod and salmon. For a predominantly Roman Catholic population, not eating meat on Fridays, seafood would have been an important part of the diet.
Hard-working farm families with many children needed a large quantity of good filling food to keep them going: rice, easy to grow in the moist warm climate of Lousiana, became the foundation of Cajun cuisine in place of the ubiquitous potatoes of Acadia. Bell peppers, cayenne, black pepper and similar spices were also a natural addition to the hearty rural Acadian dishes, given the influence of Spain in the Acadiana region, along with the African and Native American influences that have also helped to shape Cajun cooking over time.