The famous coffee that climaxes Creole (and sometimes Acadian) cooking is usually made more pungent by the addition of chicory imported from Europe.

Unlike the varieties of the plant grown for their leaves, for use in salads, the chicory used in coffee is valued for it’s carrot-shaped roots, which grow as long as 14 inches and as thick as two inches at the top. White and fleshy when raw, the root is sliced, kiln-dried, and roasted with a little oil, then ground to the desired fineness. The final product tastes so much like coffee that it is sometimes used by itself to brew a substitute for the more expensive drink.

Coffee with milk is a New Orleans institution, and a French Market coffeehouse is really the only place to drink it. The coffee and chicory blend makes it stronger and thicker, and adds a bitter flavor. Chicory was first used in New Orleans during the Civil War, when coffee was not easy to come by, and its presence in coffee has been known to scare a stranger into thinking that a survivor of the poison-prone Borgia clan has been at his cup.

Filed Under: Culinary History