Throughout her life, Scott promoted Creole cuisine.

Natalie Vivian Scott

Frontispiece to the 1931 edition of 200 Years of New Orleans Cooking.

200 years of New Orleans cooking [by] Natalie V. Scott, decorations by William Spratling. New York, J. Cape & H. Smith [c1931] xii, 238 p. front., illus. pl. 20 cm. JONES HALL Louisiana Collection, 976.3 (641) S428t.

Gourmet's guide to New Orleans, by Natalie Scott [and] Caroline Merrick Jones. [Foreword written by Dorothy Dix], [New Orleans, Peerless Printing Co., c1933], 1 p. l., v-x, 11-96 p., 3 l. 24 cm. JONES HALL Louisiana Collection. 976.3 (641) S428g Below is the cover of today's modern reprint.

By the 1930s, New Orleans had been long famous for its cooking, but Scott played a role in promoting Creole cuisine as a valid and distinguished style of its own.

Scott published a series of well-received Creole cookbooks and articles that were revised, updated, and printed in new editions over a forty-year period. Several are still in print.

While Scott's cookery works included large collections of recipes gathered from local restaurants and society hostesses, they also included discussions of New Orleans food history and traditions. In her first cookbook, Mirations and Miracles of Mandy: Some Favorite Louisiana Recipes (1929), Scoot brought together and documented recipes inspired by New Orleans African-American household cooks and housekeepers.

The cover of the current edition of 200 Years of New Orleans Cooking.

Mirations and Miracles was locally printed, but in 1931 a New York publisher brought it out under the new title 200 Years of New Orleans Cooking. The new title acknowledged the work's historical and anthropological approach. In addition to a new title, the new edition featured illustrations of the French Quarter by William Spratling. It remains in print.

Two years later Natalie teamed with Caroline Merrick Jones to produce the first of what was to become an enormously successful series, Gourmets Guide To New Orleans. The book went through more than twenty printings and was continued by Jones after Scott's death in 1959. It was most recently published in 1976 and copies are still available.

Scott also ventured into Mexican cuisine. In 1935 G.P. Putnam's Sons published Mexican Kitchen, with a forward by William Spratling. That was followed by Cocina to You: Mexican Dishes for American Kitchens, in 1946. The latter was published in Mexico City by Gráficos Mexicanos.

Sunday, August 07, 2005
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