Prairie Foods

Upcountry is hog country. While hogs are raised in many parts of America and sausages made from them, only in Cajun country can you find the sausages with an ancient French lineage. Hogs fatten on the prairies north and west of Lafayette, and Cajuns fatten on the whole hog—innards, intestines, head, feet, and blood, transformed into boudin blanc, boudin rouge, andouille and chaurice.

In 1906 when the Picayune put out its Creole Cookbook, boudin meant blood sausage, or boudin rouge. “Take a pound of hog or beef blood and mix it with hog fat and seasonings” was their formula for blood sausage. Boudin blanc, on the other hand, was a more ladylike version, made without blood and often with added white chicken meat, cream, and egg yolks to refine the ground pork. Andouilles, in this part of the world, were called “chitterlings” because they included the lining of the hog’s stomach and its intestines, packed with pork meat into long lengths of intestines before smoking. Tied into small sausages, they were called andouillettes.