The history of calas is inseparable from the history of enslaved people in Louisiana. Rice cultivation in the region was largely driven by West African agricultural knowledge — enslaved people from rice-growing regions of Sierra Leone, Senegal, and the Gambia brought both the expertise and the culinary traditions that followed from it. Calas descend directly from similar rice fritters eaten across West Africa, carried into Louisiana kitchens and transformed into something distinctly Creole over generations.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, calas were sold on the streets of New Orleans by free Black women known as cala women, who balanced covered baskets on their heads and moved through the French Quarter calling out “Belles calas! Belles calas!” — beautiful calas. For many of these women, the small income from cala sales was a means toward purchasing their own freedom or the freedom of family members. The fritter was never just food.

By the early 20th century, calas had largely disappeared from the streets. The reasons are layered — shifting economics, the decline of street vending culture, the erasure that tends to follow foods associated with Black labor. They survived in home kitchens and in a handful of Creole cookbooks, including the Picayune Creole Cook Book of 1901, which preserved the recipe at a moment when the tradition was already fading.

Contemporary New Orleans has seen a quiet revival. A few restaurants and bakeries have brought calas back to their menus, and food historians have worked to restore the full context of their origin — not as a charming curiosity of old Creole cuisine, but as a food with a specific, serious history that deserves to be told accurately. The cala women were entrepreneurs navigating an economy designed to exclude them, and the fritter they sold is part of that record.

Eaten fresh, dusted with sugar, with a strong cup of coffee, calas are straightforward and extraordinarily good. That should be enough reason on its own. The history makes them matter more.

• African Diaspora
• Creole

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Regional Roots

• New Orleans