HAITIAN TRADITIONS

The Soup of Independance
For Haitians, Jan. 1 is more than New Year's Day: It is their "Jour de l'Indépendance," commemorating the day in 1804 when, having defeated Napoleon's armies, the Caribbean island's African rebels severed their ties with France, thereby establishing what would be the world's first independent black republic. For Haitians living abroad, Independence Day brings forth both longing for the country of their birth and sadness at the turmoil in which it now finds itself. It is said that "There are no other people in the world,who love their country like Haitians." Independence Day is celebrated, in Haiti and abroad, with a pumpkin soup. The soup is traditionally made with calabaza, a Latin American winter squash that looks like an American pumpkin but tastes more like acorn or butternut squash.

Soupe au giraumont (or, in Haitian Creole, soup joumou) has a very specific history. Pumpkin is native to Haiti, and the French plantation owners there developed a taste for its sweet flesh. Although Africans worked the French-owned fields, they were not permitted to eat what they harvested and, thus, pumpkin became a forbidden fruit. One very distinctive feature of the soup is that the beef it calls for is rubbed with the juice of lemons or sour oranges before being added to the pot. This lends the soup a slightly sour tang, a welcome balance to the pumpkin's sweetness, but also an apt metaphor for the Haitian Revolution's bittersweet legacy.

Click the recipe card for the pumpkin soup recipe as well as a catalogue of other printable Haiti recipes. Click here for the pumpkin soup recipe as well as a catalogue of other printable Haiti recipes.