Gray woodturner reveals nature’s true colors
October 7, 2014EVENTS
October 7, 2014
Travel to Chauvin, Louisiana, and you’ll still hear the bayou community’s residents talking about a confectionary legend, some 20 years since it last headlined at the Lagniappe on the Bayou Festival.
For those who made the annual pilgrimage to Chauvin to attend the October festival, just hearing the word “confectionary” and the festival’s name in the same sentence is enough to reveal the legend’s identity: Pop Rouge ice cream.
“It was delicious, no doubt about it,” said Sou Lirette, a Chauvin native who served as chairman of the Lagniappe on the Bayou Festival for 25 years. “In the old days, we used to make homemade ice cream. That’s when [festival volunteer] Melvin ‘Pye’ Foret came up with the idea of going to the old-time ice cream stands.”
Volunteers Maxine Martin and Brenda Lirette manned the popular stand on the grounds of St. Joseph Catholic Church, for which the festival was a fundraiser. In an effort to bring a new flavor to the bayou, Martin and Lirette used a recipe built around Pop Rouge, a now defunct soda that had been created and distributed by the Basin Street Soda Co. Once word got around, lines began to form and Pop Rouge ice cream became a living legend.
As Lagniappe on the Bayou’s decades-long run came to an end in 1994, following an order by Catholic Bishop Warren Boudreaux to end all church fairs by 1996 because he believed churches should not be supported by “gambling and partying,” so did the magic of Pop Rouge ice cream. The soda had been out of production for three years, so those tasked with making the goodness had to find alternative “pop rouge.”
“Yeah, you can buy ‘pop rouge,’ but it’s not the same kind of Pop Rouge,” Lirette said. “It didn’t taste quite the same, but it was still good.”
Twenty years since Lagniappe on the Bayou served its last scoop of Pop Rouge ice cream, confectioner Bryan Nelson, who owns Scarlet Scoop in Houma, is keeping the tradition alive, but only in the months of October and November.
“We do pop rouge in October because Lagniappe on the Bayou was in October,” Nelson said. “It has become so big that we keep it into November. The first year, we only brought it for a week or two. People started asking us about it, so we figured we’d bring back the tradition — been doing it for a good five years now.”
Nelson received the festival’s original recipe from Martin and Lirette, and he uses it to recreate the magic daily at his downtown ice cream parlor. Pop Rouge, of course, is no longer available on shelves, so Nelson substitutes with a “strawberry drink soda” and does his best to “make it taste just like Pop Rouge.”
The smooth, creamy texture and sweet flavor is courtesy of a simple ingredients list: strawberry soda, condensed milk, evaporated milk, water, eggs, vanilla extract and, of course, ice. Nelson makes the ice cream himself and serves it in a cup or a cone. He also plans to make it a highlight at the Rougarou Fest Oct. 25 in downtown Houma.
Nelson smiles with each scoop of “pop rouge” ice cream he hands across the counter, knowing that he is keeping a tradition alive for younger generations.
“Young people don’t know what Pop Rouge is, so we explain it to them,” Nelson said. “But they love it – it’s a big hit.”
Bryan Nelson, owner of Scarlet Scoop ice cream parlor in Houma, serves up a scoop of homemade Pop Rouge ice cream, made from the original recipe once used at the Lagniappe on the Bayou Festival in Chauvin. Scarlet Scoop brings back the popular flavor in October and November.
