I’ve confessed before that I enjoy picking through old cookbooks, especially those about Louisiana cuisine. Part of the reason I like them is that they are filled with interesting recipes, but I also like them because they can tell us something about the place and time that they come from.
That’s why I was intrigued when I came across “Creole Cooking Recipes,” a curious little pocket-sized paperback that must have been given away in the 1940s by the Evangeline Pepper & Food Products Company of St. Martinville. The company made the modest pledge that just one drop of Evangeline Hot Sauce “makes good food taste better.” The book makes the slightly more grandiose claim that the hot sauce “made Louisiana French cooking famous.”
The company was owned and operated by the Buillard family, and it made more than hot sauce. You could place an order directly to the factory for a 5½-ounce bottle of Steak Sauce (fifteen cents), a 5-ounce bottle of Worcestershire Sauce (fifteen cents), a 10½-ounce jar of Home Made Chili Sauce (a quarter), an 8-ounce jar of Creole Mustard (ten cents), a 12½-ounce jar of Salad Mustard (fifteen cents), or a 2½-ounce jar of Powdered Red Pepper (fifteen cents). The company also offered Sausage Seasoning, Cut Okra in cans, canned Okra & Tomatoes, Distilled Vinegar, Home Made Okra Soup, and Old Tom Open Kettle Pure Ribbon Cane Syrup “made the old fashion way with direct fire under the kettles.”
