Creole Ben Franklin

Before New Orleans was American, it was Spanish. Before it was Spanish, New Orleans was French. New Orleans, that most francophile of cities, has the highest per capita consumption of frog legs than any other municipality in the United States. Frog legs are Creole food with a long tradition dating back to before the city's founding in 1718.

The Choctaw Indians ate frogs. They were like Cajuns. They ate anything. Creoles are pickier about what they put in their mouths.

Pierre Guy Bernaise (1703-1765) was fascinated by the effects of inclement atmospheric phenomena on frog legs. He paid colored boys to catch him frogs in the puddles along Marais Street. That’s what the voodoo queen told him to do. She also told him to hang the frog legs on his balcony on nights of the full moon. That’s when the rougarou prowls about.

For reasons all his own, M. Bernaise was looking for a cure for syphyllis. He soon discovered that a bolt of lightning will make a frog legs twitch. Even if the frog is dead. Even if the legs are disconnected from the body. Even if they’re skinned. Could be this be the cure M. Bernaise was looking for?

He was Creole Ben Franklin, and it was the Creole in him made M. Bernaise test if it would still work if the frog legs are battered. It worked. They came out perfectly medium rare and crispy in the best parts.

M. Bernaise, who the Americans called Mr. Benny, used the cast iron bannister of his Dauphine Street balcony to attract lightning. He strung pairs of frog legs dusted in cornmeal all along the bannister like bunting. When lightning struck they snapped like crawfish when you first put them in the water. They were perfectly cooked.

Because of his experiments using electricity in food preparation, Pierre Guy Bernaise is credited with being the inventor of the electric range. Early on, chefs at Gallatoire’s tried to replicate this method of frog leg preparation but the Gallitoire’s balcony has too much zinc in it to conduct more than a sporadic charge.

M. Bernaise’s original house on Dauphine Street burned down so he moved further Downtown, settling on Craps Street. He tried to replicate his results on Craps Street, but it didn’t work. Maybe it was the pickle factory next door that seemed to attract all the lightning.

It wasn’t until two hundred years later that somebody repeated M. Bernaise’s experiments and figured out how to perfectly cook frog legs in the same manner. Availability is limited.