How far rice enters into the success of the dish above mentioned I cannot say; but rice ranks in favor generally above all cereals; it is at least six times more in demand than maize. Diri-doux, rice boiled with sugar, is sold in prodigious quantities daily,—especially at the markets, where little heaps of it, rolled in pieces of banana or cachibou leaves, are retailed at a cent each. Diri-aulaitt, a veritable rice-pudding, is also very popular; but it would weary the reader to mention one-tenth of the creole preparations into which rice enters.
[52]I must mention a surreptitious dish, chatt;—needless to say the cats are not sold, but stolen. It is true that only a small class of poor people eat cats; but they eat so many cats that cats have become quite rare in St Pierre. The custom is purely superstitious: it is alleged that if you eat cat seven times, or if you eat seven cats, no witch, wizard, or quimboiseur can ever do you any harm; and the cat ought to be eaten on Christmas Eve in order that the meal be perfectly efficacious. . . . The mystic number "seven" enters into another and a better creole superstition;—if you kill a serpent, seven great sins are forgiven to you: ou ké ni sept grands péchés effacé.
VI
Everybody eats akras;—they sell at a cent apiece. The akra is a small fritter or pancake, which may be made of fifty different things,—among others codfish, titiri, beans, brains, choux-caraïbes, little black peas (poix-zié-nouè, "black-eyed peas"), or of crawfish (akra-cribîche). When made of carrots, bananas, chicken, palm-cabbage, etc. and sweetened, they are called marinades. On first acquaintance they seem rather greasy for so hot a climate; but one learns, on becoming accustomed to tropical conditions, that a certain amount of oily or greasy food is both healthy and needful.
First among popular vegetables are beans. Red beans are preferred; but boiled white beans, served cold with vinegar and plenty of oil, form a favorite salad. Next in order of preferment come the choux-caraïbes, patates, zignames, camanioc, and cousscouche: all immense roots,—the true potatoes of the tropics. The camanioc is finer than the choux-caraïbe, boils whiter and softer: in appearance it resembles the manioc root very closely, but has no toxic element. The cousscouche is the best of all: the finest Irish potato boiled into sparkling flour is not so good. Most of these roots can be cooked into a sort of mush, called migan: such as migan-choux, made with the choux-caraïbe; migan-zignames, made with yams; migan-cousscouche, etc.,—in which case crabs or shrimps are usually served with the migan. There is a particular fondness for the little rosy crab called tourlouroux, in patois touloulou. Migan is also made with bread-fruit. Very large bananas or plantains are boiled with codfish, with daubes, or meat stews, and with eggs. The bread-fruit is a fair substitute for vegetables. It must be cooked very thoroughly, and has a dry potato taste. What is called the fleu-fouitt-à-pain, or "bread-fruit flower"—a long pod-shaped solid growth, covered exteriorly with tiny seeds closely set as pin-heads could be, and having an interior pith very elastic and resistant,—is candied into a delicious sweetmeat.
VII
The consumption of bananas is enormous: more bananas are eaten than vegetables; and more banana-trees are yearly being cultivated. The negro seems to recognize instinctively that economical value of the banana to which attention was long since called by Humboldt, who estimated that while an acre planted in wheat would barely support three persons, an acre planted in banana-trees would nourish fifty.
Bananas and plantains hold the first place among fruits in popular esteem;—they are cooked in every way, and served with almost every sort of meat or fish. What we call bananas in the United States, however, are not called bananas in Martinique, but figs (figues). Plantains seem to be called bananes. One is often surprised at popular nomenclature: choux may mean either a sort of root (choux-caraïbe), or the top of the cabbage-palm; Jacquot may mean a fish; cabane never means a cabin, but a bed; crickett means not a cricket, but a frog; and at least fifty other words have equally deceptive uses. If one desires to speak of real figs—dried figs—he must say figues-Fouanc (French figs); otherwise nobody will understand him. There are many kinds of bananas here called figues,—the four most popular are the figues-bananes, which are plantains, I think; the figues-makouenga, which grow wild, and have a red skin; the figues-pommes (apple-bananas), which are large and yellow; and the ti-figues-desse (little-dessert-bananas), which are to be seen on all tables in St. Pierre. They are small, sweet, and always agreeable, even when one has no appetite for other fruits.
It requires some little time to become accustomed to many tropical fruits, or at least to find patience as well as inclination to eat them. A large number, in spite of delicious flavor, are provokingly stony: such as the ripe guavas, the cherries, the barbadines; even the corrossole and pomme-cannelle are little more than huge masses of very hard seeds buried in pulp of exquisite taste. The sapota, or sapodtilla, is less characterized by stoniness, and one soon learns to like it. It has large flat seeds, which can be split into two with the finger-nail; and a fine white skin lies between these two halves. It requires some skill to remove entire this little skin, or pellicle, without breaking it: to do so is said to be a test of affection. Perhaps this bit of folk-lore was suggested by the shape of the pellicle, which is that of a heart. The pretty fille-de-couleur asks her doudoux:—"Ess ou ainmein moin?—pouloss tiré ti lapeau-là sans cassé-y." Woe to him if he breaks it!... The most disagreeable fruit is, I think, the pomme-d'Haiti, or Haytian apple: it is very attractive exteriorly; but has a strong musky odor and taste which nauseates. Few white creoles ever eat it.
Of the oranges, nothing except praise can be said; but there are fruits that look like oranges, and are not oranges, that are far more noteworthy. There is the chadèque, which grows here to fully three feet in circumference, and has a sweet pink pulp; and there is the "forbidden-fruit" (fouitt-défendu), a sort of cross between the orange and the chadèque, and superior to both. The colored people declare that this monster fruit is the same which grew in Eden upon the fatal tree: c'est ça mênm qui fai moune ka fai yche conm ça atouelement! The fouitt-défendu is wonderful, indeed, in its way; but the fruit which most surprised me on my first acquaintance with it was the zabricôt.