Entry · catalog no. 8906
belles calas tout chauds
/ /bɛl kaˈlɑ tu ʃo/ /bel kah-LAH too SHOH
phrase (street cry) · New Orleans, Louisiana · 1870s
✓ Verified
1.
The call 'Beautiful calas, piping hot!' shouted by vendors who carried rice fritters through the streets of New Orleans, usually early in the morning.
“Her great-aunt could still do the old cry, 'Belles calas, tout chauds!', the way the vendors did.”
2.
By extension, the vendors and their trade, now a symbol of Black Creole food heritage in New Orleans.
“The restaurant put calas back on the menu as a nod to the belles calas women.”
Origin & Attribution
Calas are fried rice fritters, tied by food writers to West African rice-growing traditions, and sold in New Orleans streets by the mid-1800s. The vendors were largely women, enslaved women sometimes allowed to keep part of their earnings and free women of color, who carried covered bowls on their heads. Léon Frémeaux's 1876 lithograph Bels Calas (Merchant of Rice Fritters) pictures the trade, and the street cry is recorded in The Picayune's Creole Cook Book (1901) and the 1945 WPA volume Gumbo Ya-Ya. The trade faded in the early twentieth century, but calas survived in Black New Orleans households and returned to menus later.
1876
Frémeaux's lithograph Bels Calas depicts a vendor
1901
The Picayune's Creole Cook Book records the street sale of calas
1945
Gumbo Ya-Ya records the calas street cry
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
New Orleans, Louisiana · 1870s
Spoken by
Creole and Black New Orleans street vendors, historically women
$BELLESThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Historical150 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
15/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1876
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@nolakid
New Orleans, LA
@htxdri
Houston, TX
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Citations & Sources
■
Louisiana Writers' Project, Gumbo Ya-Ya (1945), Street Criers
book
■
The Picayune's Creole Cook Book (1901)
book
■
Léon Frémeaux, Bels Calas (Merchant of Rice Fritters), New Orleans Characters (1876)
web
■
+ Cite a source64 Parishes, 'Tale of Two Fritters'
web
See also