31 louisianacookin.com
LOUISIANA
FOODWAYSNEW ORLEANS HOLDS a strong connection
to absinthe. Given the city’s French background and
bohemian atmosphere, absinthe garnered quite a bit of
popularity in the Crescent City, and locals’ love for the
potent, anise-fl avored spirit has not waned.
Absinthe is distilled with various herbs, including
anise, fennel, and Artemisia absinthium, commonly
known as grand wormwood. Th e chlorophyll from the
herbs gives absinthe its signature green color.
By some accounts, a Swiss woman named Madame
Henriod created absinthe in the late 1700s, and it was later
adopted as a digestive tonic by Dr. Pierre Ordinaire, a
French doctor living in Switzerland. His recipe was passed
on to Daniel-Henri Dubied, who set up a small distillery
with Swiss distiller Henri Louis-Pernod. By 1805, Henri
opened the Maison Pernod Fils distillery in Pontarlier,
France, which produced the most popular brand of
absinthe until it was banned there in 1915.
Absinthe rose to great popularity in France and other
European countries during the late 19th and early 20th
centuries and became associated with the bohemian
lifestyle, as it was especially favored among artists and
writers, including Ernest Hemingway, Vincent van Gogh,
and Edgar Degas, because of its reputation for sparking
creativity. Due to wormwood’s supposed hallucinogenic
properties, which have since been disproved, absinthe
was called la fée verte (the green fairy), and 5 o’clock,
the customary hour of drinking absinthe, came to be
known as l’heure verte (the green hour), which would
subsequently become known as “happy hour.”EMERALD
ELIXIR
by caitlin watzke