Louisiana Creole cuisine in the context of "Native American cuisine"

American cuisine consists of the cooking style and range of dishes prepared in the United States, an especially diverse culture in a large country with a long history of immigration. It principally derives from a mixing of European cuisine, Native American and Alaskan cuisine, and African American cuisine, known as soul food. The Northeast, Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, South, West, Southwest, and insular areas all have distinctive elements, reflecting local food resources, local demographics, and local innovation. These developments have also given some states and cities distinctive elements. Hawaiian cuisine also reflects substantial influence from East Asian cuisine and its native Polynesian cuisine. Proximity and territorial expansion has also generated substantial influence from Latin American cuisine, including new forms like Tex-Mex and New Mexican cuisine. Modern mass media and global immigration have brought influences from many other cultures, and some elements of American food culture have become global exports. Local ethnic and religious traditions include Cajun, Louisiana Creole, Pennsylvania Dutch, Mormon, Minnesotan, Tlingit, Chinese American, German American, Italian American, Greek American, Jewish American, and Mexican American cuisines.

American cooking dates back to the traditions of the Native Americans, whose diet included a mix of farmed and hunted food, and varied widely across the continent. The Colonial period created a mix of new world and Old World cookery, and brought with it new crops and livestock. During the early 19th century, cooking was based mostly on what the agrarian population could grow, hunt, or raise on their land. With an increasing influx of immigrants, and a move to city life, American food further diversified in the later part of the 19th century. The 20th century saw a revolution in cooking as new technologies, the World Wars, a scientific understanding of food, and continued immigration combined to create a wide range of new foods. This has allowed for the current rich diversity in food dishes throughout the country. The popularity of the automobile in the 20th century also influenced American eating habits in the form of drive-in and drive-through restaurants.

New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 census, New Orleans is the most populous city in Louisiana, the second-most populous in the Deep South after Atlanta, and the twelfth-most populous in the Southeastern United States; the New Orleans metropolitan area, with about 1 million residents, is the 59th-most populous metropolitan area in the country. New Orleans serves as a major port and commercial hub for the broader Gulf Coast region. The city is coextensive with Orleans Parish.

New Orleans is renowned for its distinctive music, Creole cuisine, unique dialects, and its annual celebrations and festivals, most notably Mardi Gras. The historic heart of the city is the French Quarter, known for its French and Spanish Creole architecture and vibrant nightlife along Bourbon Street. The city has been described as the "most interesting" in the United States, owing in large part to its cross-cultural and multilingual heritage. Additionally, New Orleans has increasingly been known as "Hollywood South" due to its prominent role in the film industry and in pop culture.

The cuisine of the Southern United States encompasses diverse food traditions of several subregions, including the cuisines of Southeastern Native American tribes, Tidewater, Appalachian, Ozarks, Lowcountry, Cajun, Creole, African American cuisine and Floribbean, Spanish, French, British, Ulster-Scots, German, Italian and Middle Eastern cuisine. Elements of Southern cuisine have spread to other parts of the United States, influencing other types of American cuisine.

Many elements of Southern cooking—tomatoes, squash, corn (and its derivatives, such as hominy and grits), and deep-pit barbecuing—are borrowings from Indigenous peoples of the region (e.g., Cherokee, Caddo, Choctaw, and Seminole). From the Old World, European colonists introduced sugar, flour, milk, eggs, and livestock, along with a number of vegetables; meanwhile, enslaved West Africans trafficked to the North American colonies through the Atlantic slave trade introduced black-eyed peas, okra, eggplant, sesame, sorghum, melons, and various spices. Rice also became prominent in many dishes in the Lowcountry region of South Carolina because the enslaved people who settled the region (now known as the Gullah people) were already quite familiar with the crop.

Cajun cuisine (French: cuisine cadienne [kɥi.zin ka.dʒɛn], Spanish: cocina cadiense) is a subset of Louisiana cooking developed by the Cajuns, itself a Louisianan development incorporating elements of Native American, West African, French, and Spanish cuisine.

Cajun cuisine is often referred to as a "rustic" cuisine, meaning that it is based on locally available ingredients and that preparation is simple. Cajuns historically cooked their dishes, gumbo for example, in one pot.