Toussaint Louverture at the table

The Creole meal in the colony is not arranged as starter-main course-dessert. It is organized around a nourishing base — cassava flatbread (kasav), bananas, or cornmeal — onto which a "sauce," that is, a simmered stew of salted fish, crab, or meat, is poured. A thick soup may open the meal, a hot beverage accompanies it in the morning, and smoked meat reigns on feast days. A cuisine of blending: techniques from West Africa, products from the Antilles, salt and cod from the Atlantic.

Two hallmarks of the Saint-Domingue table: the "boucan," slow smoking of meat on a green wood grate (which gave its name to the buccaneers), and the piment-bouc (Scotch bonnet), a small aromatic fire that awakens any sauce. One preserves, the other marks.