What is the diff between cajun and creole?

Question

My wife says they are the same. Settle an argument.

Answer 1

Creole has a native American influence where cajun has more French influence.

Answer 2

Cajuns were removed from Canada and resettled in LA. The place they came from was Acadia. Acadians became Cajuns.

Creole, in New Orleans is a mix of Spanish and French. They were the upper crust in the old days. I think "Creole" may be a Spanish word that signifies this.

Wife's family is from Louisiana and I asked her about Creoles, recently. It means something else in the Carribbean.

Answer 3

I'm not finding a big difference to really speak of. It looks as if creole is basically cajun food with outside inspiration. Curious which I like if there is a difference.

Answer 4

Being creole from the French West Indies, I'd tell you first that "cajun" belongs to the USA.
Then, creole is anything linked to the culture ( people themselves, food, music, language...) of a people born from the enslavement of Africans by a European country (France, Spain, Portuguese, Great Britain...).

Answer 5

it is not the same thing cajun is a person that is like a mixture of creole and french, and there you get cajun, I'm ceole so I know, hope that helps

Answer 6

If you want to spark an argument among old-time south Louisiana gourmets, ask them to tell you the difference between Creole and Cajun cooking. It'll be entertaining.


At Brigtsen’s in New Orleans, they’re proud of their Crawfish Etouffee.
Don't bother paying much attention to what exactly they say, though. For a controversy that's carried on as long as it has with so much heat, it's delivered almost nothing either useful or interesting.

Still, it rages on, and you see the topic addressed in almost every book written about Louisiana food, and every conference on the topic. And every editor I've ever written for has insisted that I weigh in on Creole versus Cajun.

So I guess we need to drag it out every now and then. Here's my outlook. Cajun and Creole are the opposite ends of the distinctive south Louisiana cuisine. The cuisine changes subtly as you drive from Ville Platte – a tiny country town in south Louisiana - to New Orleans, the sophisticated city on the Mississippi River. You'd find the same culinary differences between any two points at an equal distance apart in France or Italy or China or India or any other place with a powerful food culture.

Creole and Cajun are much more alike than they are like anything else. But that answer doesn't satisfy you, does it? Okay, make me write a bunch more about the roots of the respective cultures of New Orleans and the Cajun country. There we do find a difference. Although both are strongly French, the Creoles and the Cajuns came to Louisiana by different paths. And once they got here, they lived differently. The Creoles were much more cosmopolitan, and blended with the Spanish, American, African, German, and Italian people, all of whom came to town in large numbers. The Cajuns, on the other hand, were isolated for most of their history. A Creole is one born in south Louisiana of parents who immigrated from Europe--most particularly France, Spain, and Portugal. In New Orleans, that became important when the Americans took over. The French Quarter became the Creole sector, while the Americans built their homes and businesses on the other side of Canal Street, the main thoroughfare and dividing line between the French Quarter and the rest of the city.

The observation that there was a distinctive Creole cuisine was first made in 1880 by the writer George Washington Cable. His book "Old Creole Days" created such a sensation that it crystallized the culture and its cuisine. A few years later, around the time of the Cotton Centennial Exposition (New Orleans' first World's Fair), Cable and Lafcadio Hearn wrote the first guidebook to New Orleans. It included highly recognizable descriptions of the food, and pointed out that it was different from the food anywhere else.

The Cajuns are descendents of the French-speaking Acadians who were banished from Nova Scotia in the early 1700s. They settled in southwest Louisiana and lived in isolation until modern times. Until the oil boom came, they had to fight to survive; the Cajun farmers, fishermen, and hunters sold the best of their gatherings and subsisted on the worst. That necessity inspired Cajun cooking, which can make a great meal out of poor ingredients.

But Acadiana, also known as Cajun country, spreads out over a large area--right up to the outskirts of New Orleans, in fact. (You can tell you're in Cajun country if you can get a piece of “hot boudin” – Cajun sausage made from rice and pork - in any gas station or grocery store you stop in.) Acadiana is a big enough place to show regional differences in its food. The most robust and interesting cooking comes from Opelousas, Henderson, Breaux Bridge and Ville Platte – all small towns in south Louisiana. The cooking gets milder but no less delicious as you move down the swampy wetlands of the Atchafalaya Basin and its bayous (the great mother lode of crawfish) to the south and east.

Unalloyed Cajun food is almost never found in restaurants, not even in Cajun country. I suspect the reason for this is that Cajun cooking, for all its glorious flavor, is not much on looks. Much of it is pot food from very big pots. Showing off the very finest ingredients with a polished presentation--essential for pleasing restaurant customers—goes against the grain of authentic Cajun cooking.

Now that we know where it all came from, what defines Creole and what defines Cajun? The answer is: nothing. And everything. I can tell you about a roux – a mixture of oil and flour that darkens and thickens gumbos--but that's in both. Salt and pepper and cream and butter and fat? More of all of them in both Creole and Cajun than in most other cooking styles, but now more than there used to be in both historically. You can pick on a few dishes. Creole jambalaya tends to be reddened with tomato, while Cajun jambalaya tends to be brown and lack tomato. Gumbo is smokier in Cajun country than in New Orleans. But you do see oysters Rockefeller (a traditional Creole dish) in Lafayette, and crawfish etouffee (a traditional Cajun dish) in New Orleans. There's been so much cross-fertilization of the styles over the decades that the merger has been consummated.

I say, stop thinking about it. Just eat it.

copyright 2003 Tom Fitzmorris