The Original Picayune Creole Cook Book

The Times-Picayune. The Original Picayune Creole Cook Book. (14th Ed) The Times-Picayune Publishing: New Orleans, 1971. 8vo (225x155mm) blue illust cloth bds xi,[1]446,[2]pp. VG/- lacks dj; bds edges faintly rubbed

The Times-Picayune.

The Original Picayune Creole Cook Book: containing recipes using wine and liquors customary in early Creole cookery.  To assist the good housewives of the present day and to preserve to future generations the many excellent and matchless recipes of the New Orleans cuisine by gathering up from the old Creole cooks and the old housekeepers the best of Creole cookery, with all its delightful combinations and possibilities is the object of this book.

New Orleans : The Times-Picayune Publishing Corporation, 1971. Fourteenth edition, First published 1900.  Copyright 1901. 

Octavo (225x155mm) blue cloth, white printed and illustrated boards, two-column text, xi,[1]446,[2]pp; colour photographic frontispiece. Lacks dust jacket, three small scuffs to upper board, edges faintly worn; spine head and foot gently pushed.


In 1900 The Times-Picayune was New Orleans largest newspaper.  It had had a cookery column for some years and in 1900 it published The Original Picayune Creole Cook Book; arguably the largest and most systematically organised book on Creole cookery then published.  It opens with a detailed history of Creole coffee and includes separate chapters for traditional Creole dishes such as boulli, gumbos, Louisiana rice, Creole confectionery and breads.  The various influences on Creole cookery are all included and there are detailed chapters for household hints and festive occasions amongst the 46 chapters.  There are many distinctly French and Spanish dishes included and almost all dishes are subtitled in French.  The author/editor is not known although some of the recipes most likely came from the cookery column of the Times-Picayune. 

Extremely popular, The Picayune Creole Cookery Book ran to 12 editions before 1954.  A lovely copy of one of the landmark texts on the Creole cookery of New Orleans.
§  cf Cagle & Stafford 607; Axford p.321; Brown 1158 for early editions.