Syrup, oysters and rice on the Vermilion
Abbeville sits about 20 miles south of Lafayette on the Vermilion River, ringed by cane fields, cattle land and fishing villages. Vermilion Parish calls itself the Most Cajun Place on Earth, a claim it bases on Census records showing nearly half its residents report Cajun ancestry. Cajun French is still spoken in parts of the parish.
The sweetest landmark in town is the Steen's mill. The family story starts in 1910, when an early freeze caught Charley Steen's cane crop and he rigged a small mill to save it as syrup. Neighbors soon hauled their own cane to him. By 1930 the Steens had built a bigger mill on the banks of Bayou Vermilion in the heart of town, and by the 1950s the yellow can was in pantries all over South Louisiana. The fourth generation runs it now, and in grinding season the smell of cooking cane drifts across downtown.
Rice has roots here too. A 2010 WWNO food piece noted that the Water Maid and Mahatma rice brands were first developed at the Riviana mill in Abbeville in the 1920s. The same piece called Abbeville a town synonymous with oysters, harvested from nearby Vermilion Bay for generations, and pointed to Dupuy's Oyster Shop, which dates to 1869. It also noted that crawfish from the surrounding farms often reach Abbeville tables as early as November.
How Abbeville got its omelette
The story the Confrérie d'Abbeville tells starts in Bessieres, in the south of France, where Napoleon is said to have ordered the villagers to cook a giant omelette for his army. In April 1985 three members of the Abbeville Chamber of Commerce went to the Easter omelette festival in Bessieres, were knighted as the town's first chevaliers, and came home to start their own. Abbeville joined a sisterhood of omelette towns that now includes Frejus in France, Dumbea in New Caledonia, Granby in Quebec, Malmedy in Belgium and Pigue in Argentina.
The recipe is fixed: 5,000 eggs plus one for every year the festival has run, 50 pounds of onions, 75 bell peppers, 52 pounds of butter, 6 and a half gallons of milk and 15 pounds of Louisiana crawfish tails. The chefs sauté the vegetables and crawfish first, pour in the eggs on command, stir with long paddles, and add parsley and onion tops just before the skillet comes off the fire. It is served free with French bread and Steen's syrup.
