The Picayune’s Creole Cookbook, published in New Orleans in 1901, includes recipes for a variety of gumbos. Some of the recipes are made with various greens and herbs, but, curiously, there is no mention of okra as a gumbo ingredient, although the book includes three recipes for okra soup. All the ingredients are useful, natural and completely harmless to men’s health, read about the prices of medicines for potency on the. The Creole Cookery Book, published by the Christian Woman’s Exchange of New Orleans in 1885, calls gumbo making an “occult science” that “should be allowed its proper place in the gastronomical world.” A New Orleans gumbo, the book maintains, “can be made of scraps of cold meat or fowl, a few oysters, crabs or shrimps, and, with a couple of spoonfuls of well cooked rice, is a very satisfying and economical dinner.” The editors include several recipes for gumbo, one of which incorporates filé (spelled “fillet” in the book). Although there is no mention of a roux in any of the recipes, some of them call for the addition of flour or browned flour as a thickener. Some of the recipes are made with okra, others with filé. Lafcadio Hearn’s La Cuisine Creole, published in 1885, contains recipes for several gumbos made from a variety of ingredients-chicken, ham, bacon, oysters, crab, shrimp, and beef, among them. But that merely scratches the surface of gumbo cookery, both historical and contemporary. Today, the gumbos people are most familiar with are seafood gumbo and chicken and sausage gumbo. In 1803, gumbo was served at a gubernatorial reception in New Orleans, and in 1804 gumbo was served at aCajun gathering on the Acadian Coast. Brasseaux, of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, who has written the definitive history of the Cajuns, found that the first documented references to gumbo appeared around the turn of the 19th century. Roux has its origin in French cuisine, although the roux used in gumbos is much darker than its Gallic cousins.ĭr. The use of filé (dried and ground sassafras leaves) was a contribution of the Choctaws and, possibly, other local tribes. The name derives from a West African word for okra, suggesting that gumbo was originally made with okra. Gumbo is often cited as an example of the melting-pot nature of Louisiana cooking, but trying to sort out the origins and evolution of the dish is highly speculative. Although ingredients might vary greatly from one cook to the next, and from one part of the state to another, a steaming bowl of fragrant gumbo is one of life’s cherished pleasures, as emblematic of Louisiana as chili is of Texas. Gumbo crosses all class barriers, appearing on the tables of the poor as well as the wealthy. Of all the dishes in the realm of Louisiana cooking, gumbo is the most famous and, very likely, the most popular. < Back to Oral History project: Southern Gumbo Trail ORAL HISTORY A Short History of Gumbo

Okra gumbo