February 27, 2019 • 29 mins
Variations on this festive Mardi Gras cake are served during Carnival season around the world, so how did the New Orleans version come to be? Anney and Lauren dig into the history and traditions surrounding king cake and Mardi Gras.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hello, and welcome to Savor. I'm an Aries and I'm
Lauren Vogelbaum. And today we're talking about Kingcake and Marty Gras,
most specifically in New Orleans because we were just there
and Carnival season is underway as we record. This hard
to say when you're listening to it. Yeah, it could
be any time. You could be a time traveler if
(00:28):
you are pleased right in Oh absolutely anyway, Yes, Carnival
season is the season in some christian Ish traditions between
Christmas and Lent. In New Orleans, you can also call
the whole season Marty Grass season, although the term does
specifically apply to a single day, and this year, the
actual day of Marty Gras or Fat Tuesday, is taking
(00:49):
place on March five, and this year is because again
we don't know. I've never been to any Marty Grass
celebrations in New Orleans, but I have done a few
in Atlanta, which, yes, I imagine are not the same
probably not no, no, no, no no, But this is
one of the things we heard about that surprised me
(01:11):
the most, what Marty Gras is really like in New Orleans.
Because yeah, I think we super producer Dylan and Lauren
and I had a very particular idea of what Marty
Gras is. We spoke about it in studio when we
got back from our trip. Is another thing we learned
about a lot of Marty Graw traditions I didn't know about.
(01:33):
But yeah, yeah, because I think for a lot of us,
when we think of Marty Gras, we think of drunk
people trying to get beads. Yeah, yeah, like like adults
that are there to be drunk, and like sea boobs
and um uh you know cause havock. It can be
(01:54):
that or that can be part of it. New Orleans
perceives an annual one point four million visitors during Martocross season.
There are parades and celebrations throughout, culminating in this final
massive party of food and drinking, music and dancing the streets.
Over fifty parades take place over the course of carnival,
organized by the famous crews like Endemion, Zulu and Bacchus
(02:17):
and newer ones like Chewbaccus Love It. There's huge, elaborate floats,
often presided over by the crews elected royalty these days,
and honor undertaken often by celebrities from Spike Lee to
Will Ferrell equally elaborate, often handmade in hand designed costumes
and throws. Throws being the handouts from the ubiquitous plastic
(02:39):
beads and dubloons and cups, too, painted coconuts, decorated shoes,
decorated shrimp boots, purses and sunglasses, and bejeweled toilet brushes,
all tossed or handed for safety reasons to these spectators
who can catch a cruise attention. So many questions about
decorated shrimp boots, but must forwarde ahead. Chris Horner, general
(03:02):
manager over at the Bombay Club and the French Quarter,
described the crowds and the chaos. I've seen some so
many crazy things, you know, it's um uh Marty Gras,
I worked and I worked on in restaurants on Bourbon
Street and U the mass of the people, you know,
when they're just just you can't walk down the street,
(03:24):
you have it. It's difficult to walk down street because
there's so many beads on the street. It's it's amazing.
It's just uh. I that the crowd gets on Bourbon
Street during during Marty Brod just that's amazed me. But
even more amazing is getting up early and watching them
cleaning up it is, oh my gosh, how they do this,
(03:46):
But they do it. They do it. The plastic beads
alone caused quite the problem. It's a serious problem. How
Stuff works did an article on it that I turned
into a Brainstuff episode to give you a sense of scale.
From September seventeen through January, cleaning crews flushed nine three
thousand pounds of beads alone out of storm drains along
(04:10):
a five block stretch of St. Charles Avenue downtown. That's
about and over forty six tons. To translate that into
beluga whales, because that's clearly a unit of scale that
we should use more often, that's about thirty one beluga
whales worth of beads. That's how I measure most things.
It's like always, you know, very very small number of
(04:33):
a beluga whales. Generally I don't deal in that large
of quantities me neither. This is a lot of beads,
is what we're saying. Yes, but there are efforts in
place to ease the clean up. None of them involve
scaling down the party. However, But while Mardi Gras certainly
can be a wild party, our interviewees told us a
(04:56):
different side of the story. They described it as a
family event, one celebrated among neighbors, like people make pots
gumbo large enough for sharing and leave their doors open
so that friends and family and you know, maybe passers
by and just drop on in the celebrations are woven
into the community. Think about it. This is a month
long celebration that really doesn't exist anywhere else in the
(05:18):
United States. New Orleanans call it the greatest free show
on earth for people who grow up there. You take
part in these celebrations, watching the parades from ladders, seeing
the elaborate costumes, hearing the music. Maybe marching in a
parade is part of a high school marching band, are
helping construct a float, and of course eating the food.
Oh that ladder thing. Um, we didn't get it on tape, unfortunately,
(05:42):
but when we were talking after our interview with Dicky
Brennan to uh to Dickey and uh Wesley Jansen, who
put us in touch with him for the Brennan Company, Yeah,
they were saying that they frequently there's so little space
on the streets that the real locals will bring a
folding ladder, like a tall, old folding ladder and like
(06:02):
duct tape a chair to the top of it. Yeah, essentially,
and then send you know whoever feels like that's the
least precarious up to watch the parade from there. It's
so fantastic. I love it. Huh. We also spoke with
a music historian at the Historic New Orleans Collection, one
Eric sid Firth, who described the electricity and the scents
(06:23):
in the air during mardy Gras and related celebrations. The
food is great. You can smell it from from afar.
You get a lot of barbecue. Not what kind of barbecue,
I don't know, it's it's we're talking about big grills
where you can get all kinds of grilled chicken, hot sausage,
smoke sausage, pork chops. I love the You can get
(06:45):
just a pork chop, barbecue pork chop on a two
between two pieces of white bread with the bone in it,
and it's just delicious. This past year, in going downtown
from Mardy Gras, we were driving on the on I
en above Clayborne and at Clayborne in Orleans. UM, there's
a big Marty Grass celebration every year and this you
(07:10):
know you you do this at like eight in the morning, right,
you gotta start early for Marty Gras on Marty grad Day,
and um, you just smell it. You could smell all
the grills going and all the food getting ready at
like eight in the morning, and it's really a part
of the you know, it's exciting. We also spoke to
Ashley McMillan about her childhood memories. She's the executive pastry
(07:32):
chef at Super New Orleans, a dessert bo Cheek specializing
in macaron chocolate and this time of year at Marty
gra dessert known as kincake. We always went to parades,
we always had Popeye's chicken and a kincake, and that's
just what it's been. So I'm not really sure where
the history of that. I think it's a glutinous thing
to do with lint too. I've heard the Popeyes is
(07:53):
a popular choice. Yeah, yeah, I've never been, but um,
it's perhaps popular over there than it is over here. Perhaps.
But all of this is really just dancing around our question,
Marty Groan, kincake, what are they? Well, one thing at
(08:17):
a time. Marty Gras or Carnival season has its basis
in Christian holidays. It starts on the holiday of the
Epiphany also called Three Kings Day, also called Twelfth Night um.
Like you know the twelve Days of Christmas, this holiday
is the Twelfth Night and it falls on at January six.
The carnival season ends with the actual day of Marty Gras,
(08:38):
also called Fat Tuesday or Shrove Tuesday. And this is
not a it's not a specific calendar date. It's it's
the day before ash Wednesday, which is the first day
of Lent, which is the forty days leading up to
the week before Easter. And since the date of Easter
every year is determined by a lunas solar calendar um,
it's the first Sunday after the full moon after the equinox.
Marty gra itself can be any time between February three
(09:01):
and March nine. During this season, you're allowed to even
supposed to live it up, break the rules and throughout,
but especially on Fat Tuesday, you're supposed to use up
rich ingredients like fats and sugars that you're expected to
refrain from during the solemn season of Lent in that vein.
The kincake is a seasonal treat in honor of the
(09:23):
Three Kings or Magi or wiseman said to have visited
the baby Jesus when he was born, which is why
kincakes are in the shape of a crown or a
more or less circular band anyway. Uh Kincakes in the
New Orleans sense are a pastry typically made with a
thick twists or braids of yeast raised Danish style dough um,
(09:45):
though either flakier or fluffier dough is sometimes used. They're
typically iced with three symbolic colors, purple for justice, green
for faith, and gold for power. The cake can be
plain or filled between the layers of dough with sorts
of things. Cinnamon and sugar is a little bit more traditional,
but then sweetened cream, cheese, jellies, and chopped sugar pecans
(10:06):
are all also common. Once baked, a wee little plastic
baby charm is typically placed somewhere inside the cake. Um
these days, other tokens like coins or peas or pecans
or beans were what was up in the past and
may still show up. Tradition holes that the plastic baby
in the cake represents Jesus, and just like Jesus showed
(10:27):
himself to the three wise man, he will show himself
to those enjoying the King cake. Side note, I have
never found the King the baby. I can't now, I
can't remember. If I have, I feel like you'd remember.
It's pretty exciting. Well I would imagine it is, because
it's never happened to me. But whoever does find the
baby in their slices crowned king for a day and
(10:51):
or host the Mardi Grass celebration, or at least buys
the cake the next year, it's a it's a lucky token.
So yeah, the result of all of this is part
dessert or breakfast I'm not judging, and part party game.
And it's I mean, it's a giant Danish right like.
It's tender and dense and a little bit flaky, and
depending on the icing and fillings it can get pretty sweet.
(11:11):
And kincakes are a bit finicky to make. I attempted
to make one once. It was fine. It was fine.
Oh yeast bread's man, oh ye spreads. Indeed, I generally
just buy mine now, as do most Americans, and no
sponsorship happening here, but I do usually get it from Supra.
(11:33):
Ashley spoke to us about supras process when it comes
to these pastries. Whenever you do kincake dough. It's very technical.
If you overproof it then it falls, If you underproof it,
it's raw. It's just a technical aspect of just making
sure we're going up to every single person checking what
they're doing, sizing it upright. Uh. Sometimes joke, I'm in
the kitchen and it's ninety five degrees because we turned
(11:55):
the entire building into a proof box so that way
the kincakes will proof long enough for us to get
him into the into the ovens. We have a man
that's been with us for about five years. His name
is Home and he helps with everything with baking. He
knows wind to bake, a wind to proof, wind pull,
I mean, just a great thing. We hire help to
come in. We do eight different people sometimes that will
come in shape proof, fake, garnish. We have eight people
(12:18):
that just garnished, so all they're doing is glazing kincakes,
waiting four hours for the glaze of dry and then
spraying them in gold lusters and all sorts of different colors.
And then we have a whole packaging area. I mean,
if you come in here during that season, you will
be like what, it's just everywhere. Everything is everywhere, and
during that time, we don't set back any production with
what we currently do. We make sure that chocolate room
(12:40):
stays at the temperature needs to stay at some nothing blues,
but everything else is hot as hot can be. Despite
the difficulty, hundreds of thousands of Kincakes are sold out
of New Orleans every Marty Gross season. I couldn't track
down a firm total, but the big commercial bakeries ramp
up to producing three thousand, five hundred Kingcakes per day
(13:02):
at their busiest. That's a lot of plastic babies. Indeed,
during the carnival season, the New Orleans NBA mascot is
a Kingcake baby. We love a funny mascot, but actually
this one is more terrified, and I believe the people
behind it are pursuing a lawsuit against the baby mascot
(13:23):
serial killer in the Happy Death They series. The resemblance
is remarkable. It is you can look it up. The
design is based on a traditional carnival parade costumes consisting
of these hugely oversized cartoonish paper mache heads on normal
sized bodies. And these designs go back hundreds of years
(13:45):
and are frequently like mocking or kind of grotesque, So
it's not like surprising the mascot designer is having to
sue a horror designer. Yeah. Um, but you know, do
you still favor and look it up or don't? Pending
on what kind of favors you like to do yourself.
Oh no, do it anyway. Yes. Kincake, the Danish dough type,
(14:09):
is perhaps the most popular, but it is not the
only kind, and New Orleans isn't the only place to
serve kincakes by far. In northern France, you can find galtra,
a flaky puff pastry filled with fring japan almond cream.
Usually a pattern is burned on top before baking with
a bean or five um, which is baked inside. Sometimes
it is completed and served with a paper crown. You
(14:31):
can find a glet raw in some French bakeries around
New Orleans, similar but not exactly the same. Bulgaria's Philo
do Baniza, and greece is crumbly almond topa pizza traditionally
served on New Year's Day and New Year's Eve, respectively.
The New Orleans kincake, in contrast to these, is closer
to the ghetto dropped from southern France, which is made
(14:53):
with Brioche and also to the rascad Rays from Spain,
which is a ring of sweet bread topped with icing
and candied fruit, which makes sense given the city's history
with Southern French and Spanish settlers. And we'll get into
that history of kin Kike and Marti Gras after a
quick break for a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
(15:22):
Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you. Like a lot of
things in New Orleans, Marti Gras is a French import
influenced by all the other cultures that we have talked
about in that area, and as we talked about in
our Jelly Donut episode, of all places, Marti Gras and
other carnival celebrations have roots that go all way back.
People have been celebrating the end of winter and the
(15:43):
return of longer warmer days up forever since the first
brave human who did to celebrate so brave, so brave.
Ancient Babylonia might have held the first carnival circa b
c Um. This was a festival that celebrated mirth and
change through satire by making a show of role reversals.
(16:05):
There would be a parade through the streets, a pair
of peasants would be royalty for the day and the
real royalty would act like fools. Pranks were played, folks
would wear costumes depicting social classes other than their own.
Everyone partied, and these traditions would be incorporated into and
or disseminated through Grecian and Roman cultural traditions like the
bacchanalia and Lubercalia and Saturnalia, and then Christian traditions, especially
(16:30):
Catholic ones. During the Middle Ages, like maybe nine. These
traditions became super popular all throughout Europe, and um lots
of specific but certainly related forms of carnival started developing
and getting passed around. Is this what was going on
in the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Oh, that's another one
(16:51):
I've never seen. Probably it's got a really dark song
in it for a Disney movie, I gotta say, I'm
and the whole thing is pretty dark. For it's grim
It's it's not really nice. I guess this is research
for later off off Mike. Outside of podcast anyway, During
(17:11):
the seventeenth and eighteenth century, France celebrated the fatting of
the calf boof crop before Lent, and they brought the
tradition to New Orleans, and of course New Orleans took
it and ran with it and made it their own.
We discussed in our Overview episode. French Canadian explorer Jean
Baptist la Vienne Bill, who is credited with naming New
Orleans along with his brother Pierre Lemoien Sieur d'ur beville.
(17:34):
Bienville also named a point about sixty miles south point
do Montegral after they realized that it was the night
before the holiday when they were picking out the name.
He also set up and named Fort Louis de Louisiana
in seventeen o two modern day Mobile, which according to
records is the first place to celebrate Marti Gras in
the New World. In seventeen or three that it was small,
(17:57):
it was apparently a success, enough so that the very
next year, in seventeen o four, a secret society was formed,
similar to a crew today Masque de Lamobile. It kept
up until seventeen o nine, and in seventeen ten the
Buff Grass Society was formed. It stuck around until eighteen
sixty one and entailed a huge bulls head pushed by
(18:17):
sixteen men. The bull was known as Rex heck yeah,
heck yeah. Oh. When New Orleans was established in seventeen eighteen,
Marty Grass celebrations slowly started to become part of the
city's fabric. The first informal parade may have happened in
seventeen twenty seven, after a group of students returned from
(18:38):
Paris with ideas and costumes. By the seventeen thirties, street
celebrations were common, and seventeen thirty seven may have seen
the first organized parade. Still no floats or beads, though
in the early seventeen forties, Louisiana governor, the Marquis de Adria,
laid the groundwork for the New Orleans Marty Grass balls
(18:58):
by setting up elegant society balls. The first known reference
to Marty Gras carnival appeared in a report to the
Spanish colonial governing body in seventy one. Around the same time,
we get the first of what would become hundreds of
New Orleans carnival clubs and organizations with the establishment of
the Perseverance, Benevolent and Mutual Aid Association. This was one
(19:20):
of the social aid clubs that we talked about again
in that intro to New Orleans that we did, and
an organization founded by free people of color to help
each other with life expenses and death expenses in times
when the establishment denied them service. They also had great parties.
By the eighteen thirties, the city celebrated Marty Gras with
processions of masked horseback riders. The parade path was lit
(19:43):
by gas light torches called glambeaux. Then, in eighteen fifty seven,
six folks from Mobile started the Mystic Crew of Comus,
and they introduced the floats to the New Orleans carnival
parades and masquerade balls. Because members of the Crew were anonymous,
the Second Crew of New Orleans formed in eighteen seventy,
which is also the same year of the first Marty
(20:04):
Gras throws. The Rex Organization, one of the oldest organizations,
solidified green, gold, and purple as Marty Grath colors by
eighteen seventy two. These colors were chosen in honor of
the visiting Russian Grand Duke Alexis Romanov. They were as
Families colors. The Rex Organization also established Rex as the
King of the daytime carnival. This century is also when
(20:26):
we get the phrase neutral ground, which at first reference
the lines dividing municipalities, but now indicates the median that
separates streets and is used as a descriptor for where
a parade goer will stand neutral ground versus sidewalk side.
In eighteen seventy five, the Marty Gras Act made Marty
Gras a legal holiday in Louisiana, and it remains so
(20:49):
to this day, and the praise and balls only got
bigger through the twentieth century as tourism and local wealth
for some not all, increased. We saw some of the
scepters and crowns of prior Crew Royalty on display at
the Historic New Orleans Collection, not like out front though,
just tucked away in the reading room where we where
we did our interview with Amanda mcfillan and Dr Jessica Harris, Like, oh,
(21:11):
no big deal. Just you know, if you happen to
be in there, I guess maybe look at these spectacularly
shiny things. Hard not to look at them, hard not to.
And we got to see some vintage ball costumes up
close during an impromp to visit to the Germaine Wells
Marty Gram Museum, located in the massive, sprawling complex that
also hosts our Nose, one of the oldest restaurants in
New Orleans. The co proprietor, Katie Casbarian, gave us a
(21:35):
tour after our interview. It was amazing. We discussed it
when we first got back Marty Gram Museum. Yeah, and
she showed it to us. It was a wonderful surprise, Yes,
oh man, because one of the one of the prior owners,
um the daughter of the original owner, was this amazing
sounding spitfire of a woman who, Yeah, who would commission
(21:58):
these why old, beautiful, gigantic, intricate Marty gar addresses. Yeah,
that looks fabulous and also incredibly heavy. So you go up,
like you know, you go up one of the many
winding stairways in this place and kind of go down
(22:18):
one of the many winding hallways, and all of a sudden,
here in this clothing museum, we're talking capes and dress
trains six ft long and six ft wide, hundreds of
thousands of gems and sequence. Also, one of the ghost
stories we heard was set in those very hallways. Stay
(22:41):
tuned after the credits to hear that one. But hey,
we're a food podcast, purportedly, what about the King Cake.
We'll get into that after a quick break for word
from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes,
(23:02):
thank you. So the first kingcakes may go all the
way back to ancient Rome. As part of the celebration
of the aforementioned Saturnalia, which is a winter solstice and
a harvest festival, pastry would be baked with a fava
being hidden inside, and the finder would be named King
of the day. The tradition became a part of Epiphany
(23:23):
celebrations in the Middle Ages. The fava bean was sometimes
replaced by a porcelain token of a crowned head to
take a little bit of the pagan out of the festival.
And when Spain and France spread their outposts to the
New World, the kingcake tradition came with them and took
on a life of its own, especially perhaps in New Orleans.
Like we said, the baby or whatever small item was used,
(23:45):
is largely believed to represent the baby Jesus. Another theory
suggests that in colonial Louisiana, the baby are really the
bean or grain of rice that it probably was at
the time commemorated the King's ball, the lucky finder of
the trinket. What it was would be ground king or
queen of the balls preceding the grand finale, Mary like,
you'd be crowned for a week and responsible for bringing
(24:08):
the cake to the next ball a week later. It
seems like a lot of balls. Yeah. Until the nineteen fifties, yeah,
things like coins or other trinkets were used. And this
is also when Americans started ordering king cakes in larger numbers.
It wasn't a baby until a bakery called Mackenzie's came
up with the idea. And at first these figures were yeah,
(24:29):
made out of porcelain and baked into the cake, but
as plastic became cheaper, they were eventually replaced with that
which comes alongside the cake and not baked into it,
due to you know, concerns about baking plastic. Right, No,
not delicious. These early cakes were also more bread like
or brioche like or pundule say like, and they didn't
(24:50):
have filling yet either. That didn't come around until the
nineteen eighties, as bakers began adding more eggs and sugar
to the recipes or straight up switching to Danish hastory recipes.
An anecdotal tail puts the first commercial filled kincakes in
New Orleans to nine eight three, according to our friend
Liz Williams. According to Jones Seaman, that year Jones Bakery
(25:15):
baked four filled cakes, her husband took one to work,
and they got twenty five calls about filled cakes within
thirty minutes. That's some good marketing, accidental or otherwise. This
is when shipping technology improved as well, and part thanks
to folks moving out of New Orleans due to the
boom Bus but still wanting their kincakes, and also due
(25:37):
to food editors quickly demand grew. By nine nineteen, bakers
in Louisiana, in conjunction with the United States Postal Service,
offered overnight delivery for eighteen dollars. According to Federal Express,
they had been shipping thirty thousand kincakes annually since nine.
Remember that that's around when Cajun and Creole food really
(25:59):
hit the national scene. And with this national trend status
and the honed sense of community history and pride that
that rose up after Katrina, you've got a veritable glut
of kincake options today. Miniature kincakes, kincake donuts, kincake, vodka, kincake,
bourbon milk, punch of kincake, smoothie and of course, in
(26:19):
a city that loves a party, Kincake Festival held in
late January. Of course, well, that about brings us to
the end of this episode and listeners, we would love
to hear from you. Have you been to this festival?
Do you have a kingcake recipe or a favorite shop
to buy one at? Please let us know at Hello
(26:39):
at savor pod dot com. You can also find us
on social media. We are on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook
at savor Pod. We hope to hear from you. Thank you,
as always to our superproducers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard,
our executive producer Christopher Hasiotis, and our interviewees and the
good folks who put us in touch with those interviewees.
Thank you to you for listening and you hope that
(27:00):
lots more good things are coming your way. So that
museum was created in honor of Jermine Wells, that the
founder's daughter who ran the restaurant for thirty years. She
presided over more Marty Girl balls than any other woman.
And she had created these mannequins to resemble her, and
had these gowns that she wore put on the mannequins
(27:23):
and it was in a back house area that people
could go see. But when my parents bought the restaurant
and renovated, they ended up with sort of an unusable,
awkward space that could have only been used for storage
at some point, but they had all of these things,
so they decided to make a museum in her eye.
So it's a very quirky, spooky, amazing space that people
(27:45):
love still to the state to come see, and anyone
can come. You don't have to dine here, um, you
just it's open during our operating hours. So that's the
backstory in the museum. There was some workers who did
work here all the time, so it wasn't like they
had just were here for that project. They were doing
some painting or something in the space, and it was
before we were open, so it wasn't during our operating hours. Um.
(28:08):
And they this woman came up the steps and was
confused about getting out. Wasn't was you know, it's easy
to get turned around in here. So it was two
of them, and one of them had gone to go,
you know, I don't know, like rinse off a pape
rush or something. Woman's confused about getting out. So this
(28:28):
guy's instructing her how to get out. He has conversation
with her. She follows his instruction, but almost like immediately,
the other guy comes back up. And so the guy
that gave the instruction said, hey, did you see that
that woman got out? And he said, were you talking about?
There was no woman. You know that we're the only
ones here. The restaurant's closes, no woman here. Storry number
(28:52):
two always a good one.
Hello, and welcome to Savor. I'm an Aries and I'm
Lauren Vogelbaum. And today we're talking about Kingcake and Marty Gras,
most specifically in New Orleans because we were just there
and Carnival season is underway as we record. This hard
to say when you're listening to it. Yeah, it could
be any time. You could be a time traveler if
(00:28):
you are pleased right in Oh absolutely anyway, Yes, Carnival
season is the season in some christian Ish traditions between
Christmas and Lent. In New Orleans, you can also call
the whole season Marty Grass season, although the term does
specifically apply to a single day, and this year, the
actual day of Marty Gras or Fat Tuesday, is taking
(00:49):
place on March five, and this year is because again
we don't know. I've never been to any Marty Grass
celebrations in New Orleans, but I have done a few
in Atlanta, which, yes, I imagine are not the same
probably not no, no, no, no no, But this is
one of the things we heard about that surprised me
(01:11):
the most, what Marty Gras is really like in New Orleans.
Because yeah, I think we super producer Dylan and Lauren
and I had a very particular idea of what Marty
Gras is. We spoke about it in studio when we
got back from our trip. Is another thing we learned
about a lot of Marty Graw traditions I didn't know about.
(01:33):
But yeah, yeah, because I think for a lot of us,
when we think of Marty Gras, we think of drunk
people trying to get beads. Yeah, yeah, like like adults
that are there to be drunk, and like sea boobs
and um uh you know cause havock. It can be
(01:54):
that or that can be part of it. New Orleans
perceives an annual one point four million visitors during Martocross season.
There are parades and celebrations throughout, culminating in this final
massive party of food and drinking, music and dancing the streets.
Over fifty parades take place over the course of carnival,
organized by the famous crews like Endemion, Zulu and Bacchus
(02:17):
and newer ones like Chewbaccus Love It. There's huge, elaborate floats,
often presided over by the crews elected royalty these days,
and honor undertaken often by celebrities from Spike Lee to
Will Ferrell equally elaborate, often handmade in hand designed costumes
and throws. Throws being the handouts from the ubiquitous plastic
(02:39):
beads and dubloons and cups, too, painted coconuts, decorated shoes,
decorated shrimp boots, purses and sunglasses, and bejeweled toilet brushes,
all tossed or handed for safety reasons to these spectators
who can catch a cruise attention. So many questions about
decorated shrimp boots, but must forwarde ahead. Chris Horner, general
(03:02):
manager over at the Bombay Club and the French Quarter,
described the crowds and the chaos. I've seen some so
many crazy things, you know, it's um uh Marty Gras,
I worked and I worked on in restaurants on Bourbon
Street and U the mass of the people, you know,
when they're just just you can't walk down the street,
(03:24):
you have it. It's difficult to walk down street because
there's so many beads on the street. It's it's amazing.
It's just uh. I that the crowd gets on Bourbon
Street during during Marty Brod just that's amazed me. But
even more amazing is getting up early and watching them
cleaning up it is, oh my gosh, how they do this,
(03:46):
But they do it. They do it. The plastic beads
alone caused quite the problem. It's a serious problem. How
Stuff works did an article on it that I turned
into a Brainstuff episode to give you a sense of scale.
From September seventeen through January, cleaning crews flushed nine three
thousand pounds of beads alone out of storm drains along
(04:10):
a five block stretch of St. Charles Avenue downtown. That's
about and over forty six tons. To translate that into
beluga whales, because that's clearly a unit of scale that
we should use more often, that's about thirty one beluga
whales worth of beads. That's how I measure most things.
It's like always, you know, very very small number of
(04:33):
a beluga whales. Generally I don't deal in that large
of quantities me neither. This is a lot of beads,
is what we're saying. Yes, but there are efforts in
place to ease the clean up. None of them involve
scaling down the party. However, But while Mardi Gras certainly
can be a wild party, our interviewees told us a
(04:56):
different side of the story. They described it as a
family event, one celebrated among neighbors, like people make pots
gumbo large enough for sharing and leave their doors open
so that friends and family and you know, maybe passers
by and just drop on in the celebrations are woven
into the community. Think about it. This is a month
long celebration that really doesn't exist anywhere else in the
(05:18):
United States. New Orleanans call it the greatest free show
on earth for people who grow up there. You take
part in these celebrations, watching the parades from ladders, seeing
the elaborate costumes, hearing the music. Maybe marching in a
parade is part of a high school marching band, are
helping construct a float, and of course eating the food.
Oh that ladder thing. Um, we didn't get it on tape, unfortunately,
(05:42):
but when we were talking after our interview with Dicky
Brennan to uh to Dickey and uh Wesley Jansen, who
put us in touch with him for the Brennan Company, Yeah,
they were saying that they frequently there's so little space
on the streets that the real locals will bring a
folding ladder, like a tall, old folding ladder and like
(06:02):
duct tape a chair to the top of it. Yeah, essentially,
and then send you know whoever feels like that's the
least precarious up to watch the parade from there. It's
so fantastic. I love it. Huh. We also spoke with
a music historian at the Historic New Orleans Collection, one
Eric sid Firth, who described the electricity and the scents
(06:23):
in the air during mardy Gras and related celebrations. The
food is great. You can smell it from from afar.
You get a lot of barbecue. Not what kind of barbecue,
I don't know, it's it's we're talking about big grills
where you can get all kinds of grilled chicken, hot sausage,
smoke sausage, pork chops. I love the You can get
(06:45):
just a pork chop, barbecue pork chop on a two
between two pieces of white bread with the bone in it,
and it's just delicious. This past year, in going downtown
from Mardy Gras, we were driving on the on I
en above Clayborne and at Clayborne in Orleans. UM, there's
a big Marty Grass celebration every year and this you
(07:10):
know you you do this at like eight in the morning, right,
you gotta start early for Marty Gras on Marty grad Day,
and um, you just smell it. You could smell all
the grills going and all the food getting ready at
like eight in the morning, and it's really a part
of the you know, it's exciting. We also spoke to
Ashley McMillan about her childhood memories. She's the executive pastry
(07:32):
chef at Super New Orleans, a dessert bo Cheek specializing
in macaron chocolate and this time of year at Marty
gra dessert known as kincake. We always went to parades,
we always had Popeye's chicken and a kincake, and that's
just what it's been. So I'm not really sure where
the history of that. I think it's a glutinous thing
to do with lint too. I've heard the Popeyes is
(07:53):
a popular choice. Yeah, yeah, I've never been, but um,
it's perhaps popular over there than it is over here. Perhaps.
But all of this is really just dancing around our question,
Marty Groan, kincake, what are they? Well, one thing at
(08:17):
a time. Marty Gras or Carnival season has its basis
in Christian holidays. It starts on the holiday of the
Epiphany also called Three Kings Day, also called Twelfth Night um.
Like you know the twelve Days of Christmas, this holiday
is the Twelfth Night and it falls on at January six.
The carnival season ends with the actual day of Marty Gras,
(08:38):
also called Fat Tuesday or Shrove Tuesday. And this is
not a it's not a specific calendar date. It's it's
the day before ash Wednesday, which is the first day
of Lent, which is the forty days leading up to
the week before Easter. And since the date of Easter
every year is determined by a lunas solar calendar um,
it's the first Sunday after the full moon after the equinox.
Marty gra itself can be any time between February three
(09:01):
and March nine. During this season, you're allowed to even
supposed to live it up, break the rules and throughout,
but especially on Fat Tuesday, you're supposed to use up
rich ingredients like fats and sugars that you're expected to
refrain from during the solemn season of Lent in that vein.
The kincake is a seasonal treat in honor of the
(09:23):
Three Kings or Magi or wiseman said to have visited
the baby Jesus when he was born, which is why
kincakes are in the shape of a crown or a
more or less circular band anyway. Uh Kincakes in the
New Orleans sense are a pastry typically made with a
thick twists or braids of yeast raised Danish style dough um,
(09:45):
though either flakier or fluffier dough is sometimes used. They're
typically iced with three symbolic colors, purple for justice, green
for faith, and gold for power. The cake can be
plain or filled between the layers of dough with sorts
of things. Cinnamon and sugar is a little bit more traditional,
but then sweetened cream, cheese, jellies, and chopped sugar pecans
(10:06):
are all also common. Once baked, a wee little plastic
baby charm is typically placed somewhere inside the cake. Um
these days, other tokens like coins or peas or pecans
or beans were what was up in the past and
may still show up. Tradition holes that the plastic baby
in the cake represents Jesus, and just like Jesus showed
(10:27):
himself to the three wise man, he will show himself
to those enjoying the King cake. Side note, I have
never found the King the baby. I can't now, I
can't remember. If I have, I feel like you'd remember.
It's pretty exciting. Well I would imagine it is, because
it's never happened to me. But whoever does find the
baby in their slices crowned king for a day and
(10:51):
or host the Mardi Grass celebration, or at least buys
the cake the next year, it's a it's a lucky token.
So yeah, the result of all of this is part
dessert or breakfast I'm not judging, and part party game.
And it's I mean, it's a giant Danish right like.
It's tender and dense and a little bit flaky, and
depending on the icing and fillings it can get pretty sweet.
(11:11):
And kincakes are a bit finicky to make. I attempted
to make one once. It was fine. It was fine.
Oh yeast bread's man, oh ye spreads. Indeed, I generally
just buy mine now, as do most Americans, and no
sponsorship happening here, but I do usually get it from Supra.
(11:33):
Ashley spoke to us about supras process when it comes
to these pastries. Whenever you do kincake dough. It's very technical.
If you overproof it then it falls, If you underproof it,
it's raw. It's just a technical aspect of just making
sure we're going up to every single person checking what
they're doing, sizing it upright. Uh. Sometimes joke, I'm in
the kitchen and it's ninety five degrees because we turned
(11:55):
the entire building into a proof box so that way
the kincakes will proof long enough for us to get
him into the into the ovens. We have a man
that's been with us for about five years. His name
is Home and he helps with everything with baking. He
knows wind to bake, a wind to proof, wind pull,
I mean, just a great thing. We hire help to
come in. We do eight different people sometimes that will
come in shape proof, fake, garnish. We have eight people
(12:18):
that just garnished, so all they're doing is glazing kincakes,
waiting four hours for the glaze of dry and then
spraying them in gold lusters and all sorts of different colors.
And then we have a whole packaging area. I mean,
if you come in here during that season, you will
be like what, it's just everywhere. Everything is everywhere, and
during that time, we don't set back any production with
what we currently do. We make sure that chocolate room
(12:40):
stays at the temperature needs to stay at some nothing blues,
but everything else is hot as hot can be. Despite
the difficulty, hundreds of thousands of Kincakes are sold out
of New Orleans every Marty Gross season. I couldn't track
down a firm total, but the big commercial bakeries ramp
up to producing three thousand, five hundred Kingcakes per day
(13:02):
at their busiest. That's a lot of plastic babies. Indeed,
during the carnival season, the New Orleans NBA mascot is
a Kingcake baby. We love a funny mascot, but actually
this one is more terrified, and I believe the people
behind it are pursuing a lawsuit against the baby mascot
(13:23):
serial killer in the Happy Death They series. The resemblance
is remarkable. It is you can look it up. The
design is based on a traditional carnival parade costumes consisting
of these hugely oversized cartoonish paper mache heads on normal
sized bodies. And these designs go back hundreds of years
(13:45):
and are frequently like mocking or kind of grotesque, So
it's not like surprising the mascot designer is having to
sue a horror designer. Yeah. Um, but you know, do
you still favor and look it up or don't? Pending
on what kind of favors you like to do yourself.
Oh no, do it anyway. Yes. Kincake, the Danish dough type,
(14:09):
is perhaps the most popular, but it is not the
only kind, and New Orleans isn't the only place to
serve kincakes by far. In northern France, you can find galtra,
a flaky puff pastry filled with fring japan almond cream.
Usually a pattern is burned on top before baking with
a bean or five um, which is baked inside. Sometimes
it is completed and served with a paper crown. You
(14:31):
can find a glet raw in some French bakeries around
New Orleans, similar but not exactly the same. Bulgaria's Philo
do Baniza, and greece is crumbly almond topa pizza traditionally
served on New Year's Day and New Year's Eve, respectively.
The New Orleans kincake, in contrast to these, is closer
to the ghetto dropped from southern France, which is made
(14:53):
with Brioche and also to the rascad Rays from Spain,
which is a ring of sweet bread topped with icing
and candied fruit, which makes sense given the city's history
with Southern French and Spanish settlers. And we'll get into
that history of kin Kike and Marti Gras after a
quick break for a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
(15:22):
Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you. Like a lot of
things in New Orleans, Marti Gras is a French import
influenced by all the other cultures that we have talked
about in that area, and as we talked about in
our Jelly Donut episode, of all places, Marti Gras and
other carnival celebrations have roots that go all way back.
People have been celebrating the end of winter and the
(15:43):
return of longer warmer days up forever since the first
brave human who did to celebrate so brave, so brave.
Ancient Babylonia might have held the first carnival circa b
c Um. This was a festival that celebrated mirth and
change through satire by making a show of role reversals.
(16:05):
There would be a parade through the streets, a pair
of peasants would be royalty for the day and the
real royalty would act like fools. Pranks were played, folks
would wear costumes depicting social classes other than their own.
Everyone partied, and these traditions would be incorporated into and
or disseminated through Grecian and Roman cultural traditions like the
bacchanalia and Lubercalia and Saturnalia, and then Christian traditions, especially
(16:30):
Catholic ones. During the Middle Ages, like maybe nine. These
traditions became super popular all throughout Europe, and um lots
of specific but certainly related forms of carnival started developing
and getting passed around. Is this what was going on
in the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Oh, that's another one
(16:51):
I've never seen. Probably it's got a really dark song
in it for a Disney movie, I gotta say, I'm
and the whole thing is pretty dark. For it's grim
It's it's not really nice. I guess this is research
for later off off Mike. Outside of podcast anyway, During
(17:11):
the seventeenth and eighteenth century, France celebrated the fatting of
the calf boof crop before Lent, and they brought the
tradition to New Orleans, and of course New Orleans took
it and ran with it and made it their own.
We discussed in our Overview episode. French Canadian explorer Jean
Baptist la Vienne Bill, who is credited with naming New
Orleans along with his brother Pierre Lemoien Sieur d'ur beville.
(17:34):
Bienville also named a point about sixty miles south point
do Montegral after they realized that it was the night
before the holiday when they were picking out the name.
He also set up and named Fort Louis de Louisiana
in seventeen o two modern day Mobile, which according to
records is the first place to celebrate Marti Gras in
the New World. In seventeen or three that it was small,
(17:57):
it was apparently a success, enough so that the very
next year, in seventeen o four, a secret society was formed,
similar to a crew today Masque de Lamobile. It kept
up until seventeen o nine, and in seventeen ten the
Buff Grass Society was formed. It stuck around until eighteen
sixty one and entailed a huge bulls head pushed by
(18:17):
sixteen men. The bull was known as Rex heck yeah,
heck yeah. Oh. When New Orleans was established in seventeen eighteen,
Marty Grass celebrations slowly started to become part of the
city's fabric. The first informal parade may have happened in
seventeen twenty seven, after a group of students returned from
(18:38):
Paris with ideas and costumes. By the seventeen thirties, street
celebrations were common, and seventeen thirty seven may have seen
the first organized parade. Still no floats or beads, though
in the early seventeen forties, Louisiana governor, the Marquis de Adria,
laid the groundwork for the New Orleans Marty Grass balls
(18:58):
by setting up elegant society balls. The first known reference
to Marty Gras carnival appeared in a report to the
Spanish colonial governing body in seventy one. Around the same time,
we get the first of what would become hundreds of
New Orleans carnival clubs and organizations with the establishment of
the Perseverance, Benevolent and Mutual Aid Association. This was one
(19:20):
of the social aid clubs that we talked about again
in that intro to New Orleans that we did, and
an organization founded by free people of color to help
each other with life expenses and death expenses in times
when the establishment denied them service. They also had great parties.
By the eighteen thirties, the city celebrated Marty Gras with
processions of masked horseback riders. The parade path was lit
(19:43):
by gas light torches called glambeaux. Then, in eighteen fifty seven,
six folks from Mobile started the Mystic Crew of Comus,
and they introduced the floats to the New Orleans carnival
parades and masquerade balls. Because members of the Crew were anonymous,
the Second Crew of New Orleans formed in eighteen seventy,
which is also the same year of the first Marty
(20:04):
Gras throws. The Rex Organization, one of the oldest organizations,
solidified green, gold, and purple as Marty Grath colors by
eighteen seventy two. These colors were chosen in honor of
the visiting Russian Grand Duke Alexis Romanov. They were as
Families colors. The Rex Organization also established Rex as the
King of the daytime carnival. This century is also when
(20:26):
we get the phrase neutral ground, which at first reference
the lines dividing municipalities, but now indicates the median that
separates streets and is used as a descriptor for where
a parade goer will stand neutral ground versus sidewalk side.
In eighteen seventy five, the Marty Gras Act made Marty
Gras a legal holiday in Louisiana, and it remains so
(20:49):
to this day, and the praise and balls only got
bigger through the twentieth century as tourism and local wealth
for some not all, increased. We saw some of the
scepters and crowns of prior Crew Royalty on display at
the Historic New Orleans Collection, not like out front though,
just tucked away in the reading room where we where
we did our interview with Amanda mcfillan and Dr Jessica Harris, Like, oh,
(21:11):
no big deal. Just you know, if you happen to
be in there, I guess maybe look at these spectacularly
shiny things. Hard not to look at them, hard not to.
And we got to see some vintage ball costumes up
close during an impromp to visit to the Germaine Wells
Marty Gram Museum, located in the massive, sprawling complex that
also hosts our Nose, one of the oldest restaurants in
New Orleans. The co proprietor, Katie Casbarian, gave us a
(21:35):
tour after our interview. It was amazing. We discussed it
when we first got back Marty Gram Museum. Yeah, and
she showed it to us. It was a wonderful surprise, Yes,
oh man, because one of the one of the prior owners,
um the daughter of the original owner, was this amazing
sounding spitfire of a woman who, Yeah, who would commission
(21:58):
these why old, beautiful, gigantic, intricate Marty gar addresses. Yeah,
that looks fabulous and also incredibly heavy. So you go up,
like you know, you go up one of the many
winding stairways in this place and kind of go down
(22:18):
one of the many winding hallways, and all of a sudden,
here in this clothing museum, we're talking capes and dress
trains six ft long and six ft wide, hundreds of
thousands of gems and sequence. Also, one of the ghost
stories we heard was set in those very hallways. Stay
(22:41):
tuned after the credits to hear that one. But hey,
we're a food podcast, purportedly, what about the King Cake.
We'll get into that after a quick break for word
from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes,
(23:02):
thank you. So the first kingcakes may go all the
way back to ancient Rome. As part of the celebration
of the aforementioned Saturnalia, which is a winter solstice and
a harvest festival, pastry would be baked with a fava
being hidden inside, and the finder would be named King
of the day. The tradition became a part of Epiphany
(23:23):
celebrations in the Middle Ages. The fava bean was sometimes
replaced by a porcelain token of a crowned head to
take a little bit of the pagan out of the festival.
And when Spain and France spread their outposts to the
New World, the kingcake tradition came with them and took
on a life of its own, especially perhaps in New Orleans.
Like we said, the baby or whatever small item was used,
(23:45):
is largely believed to represent the baby Jesus. Another theory
suggests that in colonial Louisiana, the baby are really the
bean or grain of rice that it probably was at
the time commemorated the King's ball, the lucky finder of
the trinket. What it was would be ground king or
queen of the balls preceding the grand finale, Mary like,
you'd be crowned for a week and responsible for bringing
(24:08):
the cake to the next ball a week later. It
seems like a lot of balls. Yeah. Until the nineteen fifties, yeah,
things like coins or other trinkets were used. And this
is also when Americans started ordering king cakes in larger numbers.
It wasn't a baby until a bakery called Mackenzie's came
up with the idea. And at first these figures were yeah,
(24:29):
made out of porcelain and baked into the cake, but
as plastic became cheaper, they were eventually replaced with that
which comes alongside the cake and not baked into it,
due to you know, concerns about baking plastic. Right, No,
not delicious. These early cakes were also more bread like
or brioche like or pundule say like, and they didn't
(24:50):
have filling yet either. That didn't come around until the
nineteen eighties, as bakers began adding more eggs and sugar
to the recipes or straight up switching to Danish hastory recipes.
An anecdotal tail puts the first commercial filled kincakes in
New Orleans to nine eight three, according to our friend
Liz Williams. According to Jones Seaman, that year Jones Bakery
(25:15):
baked four filled cakes, her husband took one to work,
and they got twenty five calls about filled cakes within
thirty minutes. That's some good marketing, accidental or otherwise. This
is when shipping technology improved as well, and part thanks
to folks moving out of New Orleans due to the
boom Bus but still wanting their kincakes, and also due
(25:37):
to food editors quickly demand grew. By nine nineteen, bakers
in Louisiana, in conjunction with the United States Postal Service,
offered overnight delivery for eighteen dollars. According to Federal Express,
they had been shipping thirty thousand kincakes annually since nine.
Remember that that's around when Cajun and Creole food really
(25:59):
hit the national scene. And with this national trend status
and the honed sense of community history and pride that
that rose up after Katrina, you've got a veritable glut
of kincake options today. Miniature kincakes, kincake donuts, kincake, vodka, kincake,
bourbon milk, punch of kincake, smoothie and of course, in
(26:19):
a city that loves a party, Kincake Festival held in
late January. Of course, well, that about brings us to
the end of this episode and listeners, we would love
to hear from you. Have you been to this festival?
Do you have a kingcake recipe or a favorite shop
to buy one at? Please let us know at Hello
(26:39):
at savor pod dot com. You can also find us
on social media. We are on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook
at savor Pod. We hope to hear from you. Thank you,
as always to our superproducers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard,
our executive producer Christopher Hasiotis, and our interviewees and the
good folks who put us in touch with those interviewees.
Thank you to you for listening and you hope that
(27:00):
lots more good things are coming your way. So that
museum was created in honor of Jermine Wells, that the
founder's daughter who ran the restaurant for thirty years. She
presided over more Marty Girl balls than any other woman.
And she had created these mannequins to resemble her, and
had these gowns that she wore put on the mannequins
(27:23):
and it was in a back house area that people
could go see. But when my parents bought the restaurant
and renovated, they ended up with sort of an unusable,
awkward space that could have only been used for storage
at some point, but they had all of these things,
so they decided to make a museum in her eye.
So it's a very quirky, spooky, amazing space that people
(27:45):
love still to the state to come see, and anyone
can come. You don't have to dine here, um, you
just it's open during our operating hours. So that's the
backstory in the museum. There was some workers who did
work here all the time, so it wasn't like they
had just were here for that project. They were doing
some painting or something in the space, and it was
before we were open, so it wasn't during our operating hours. Um.
(28:08):
And they this woman came up the steps and was
confused about getting out. Wasn't was you know, it's easy
to get turned around in here. So it was two
of them, and one of them had gone to go,
you know, I don't know, like rinse off a pape
rush or something. Woman's confused about getting out. So this
(28:28):
guy's instructing her how to get out. He has conversation
with her. She follows his instruction, but almost like immediately,
the other guy comes back up. And so the guy
that gave the instruction said, hey, did you see that
that woman got out? And he said, were you talking about?
There was no woman. You know that we're the only
ones here. The restaurant's closes, no woman here. Storry number
(28:52):
two always a good one.
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Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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