Cajun Dictionary

 Andouille (ahn-do-ee)            A spicy country sausage used in Gumbo and other Cajun dishes.

 Beignet (ben-yea)                  Delicious sweet doughnuts, square-shaped and minus the hole, lavishly sprinkled with powdered sugar.  Sometimes served with café au lait (coffee with chicory and milk).

 Boudin (boo-dan)                  Hot, spicy pork mixed with onions, cooked rice, herbs, and stuffed in sausage casing.

 Café au Lait (kah-fay-oh-lay)   Coffee with steamed milk.

 Cajun (cay-jun)                      Slang for Acadians, the French-speaking people who migrated to South Louisiana from Nova Scotia in the eighteenth century. Cajuns were happily removed from city life preferring a rustic life along the bayous. The term now applies to the people, the culture, and the cooking.

 Chicory (chick-ory)                 An herb, the roots of which are dried, ground; roasted and used to flavor coffee.

 Crawfish (craw-fish)               Crawfish, sometimes spelled "crayfish," resemble lobsters, but are much smaller. Locally, they are known as "mudbugs," because they live and grow in the mud of freshwater bayous. They can be served many ways: in etouffees, jambalaya, gumbos or, simply boiled.

 Creole (cree-ol)                     The word originally described those people of mixed French and Spanish blood who migrated from Europe or were born in Southeast Louisiana and lived as sophisticated city or plantation dwellers. The term has expanded and now embraces a type of cuisine and a style of architecture.

 Etoufee (ay-too-fay)               A succulent, tangy tomato-based sauce. A smothered dish usually made with crawfish or shrimp. Crawfish and Shrimp etouffees are New Orleans and Cajun country specialties.

File (fee-lay)                           Ground sassafras leaves used to season, among other things, gumbo.

 Gumbo (gum-boe)                  A thick, robust roux-based soup sometimes thickened with okra or file'. There are thousands of variations, such as shrimp or seafood gumbo, chicken or duck gumbo, okra and file' gumbo.

 Jambalaya (jum-bo-lie-yah)   Louisiana chefs "sweep up the kitchen" and toss just about everything into the pot. A rice dish with any combination of beef, pork, fowl, smoked sausage, ham, or seafood, as well as celery, green peppers and often tomatoes.

 King Cake                              A ring shaped oval pastry, decorated with colored sugar in the traditional Mardi Gras colors, purple, green, and gold, which represent justice, faith, and power. A small plastic baby is hidden inside the cake. Tradition requires that the person who gets the baby in their piece must provide the next King Cake.

 Lagniappe (lan-yap)              This word is Cajun for "something extra," like the extra donut in a baker's dozen. An unexpected nice surprise.

 Po-Boy                                   A sandwich extravaganza that began as a five-cent lunch for poor boys. Always made with French bread, po-boys can be stuffed with fried oysters, shrimp, fish, crawfish, meatballs, smoked sausage and more.

 Praline (praw-leen)                The sweetest of sweets, this New Orleans tradition is a candy patty made of sugar, cream and pecans.

  Roux (rue)                             Base of gumbos or stews, made of flour and oil mixture.