When was gumbo invented

But Tooker has little patience for that conceit. It's not the holy goddamn trinity! Tooker claims to make the best gumbo in the city see her recipes for seafood gumbo and "diaspora gumbo" , but I asked her to suggest some establishments where one might find a reliably authentic version of the dish. She named only one: Dooky Chase's , where the legendary Leah Chase has been cooking for more than 50 years.

I asked Lolis Eric Elie the same question. He first mentioned Loretta's, in the Marigny neighborhood, where he had recently tasted a seafood gumbo that reminded him--just a little bit--of his mother's. In addition to its signature doughnuts, Honey Whip Donuts serves some plate lunches, including gumbo on Fridays. Well, they were as poor as the fleas on a church mouse.

My grandmother had been very generous to them, and so that was their kind of way of paying tribute to that relationship. So I tasted their gumbo.

And I could go on and on about how different that gumbo is from my mother's. But, still Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic. Popular Latest. The Atlantic Crossword. The article also noted, "This is the dish we in America call gombo. This is done with the pods of a species of mallow, known to botanists as the sabdariffa.

But I've not been able to turn up a single example of a dish being called "kombo" in any 18th or 19th century source, while there are countless examples of a dish made from okra being called either "gombo" or "gumbo.

The most probable path is that Louisianians were eating a thick stew they called "gombo" after its main ingredient, okra. Though well entrenched in Louisiana, gumbo was by no means a dish unique to that region. Indeed, during the colonial era and the early 19th century, similar okra-based stews and soups could be found anywhere a large number of enslaved Africans and their descendants lived—and, in fact, those dishes can still be found there today.

Tracing gumbo's roots is complicated by the fact that no African Americans recorded their recipes in cookbooks until after the Civil War, but in the early 19th century, recipes for gumbo started to pop up in writings by white authors.

In , the American Star of Petersburg, Virginia, ran an article describing okra, which it noted "is common in the West Indies. In the first, an equal amount of cut okra and tomatoes are stewed with onions, butter, and salt and pepper.

In the other, okra is stewed in water and dressed with butter. Domingo," the writer notes, "they are called gambo. An article on okra in the New England Farmer noted the plant's "known reputation in the West Indies" and that, "a very celebrated dish, called Gombo, is prepared in those countries where okra is grown, by mixing with the green pods, ripe tomatoes, and onions; all chopped fine, to which are added pepper and salt, and the whole stewed.

In the mid 19th century, gumbo shifted from being a dish associated with the West Indies to one associated with New Orleans, perhaps thanks to the extent to which cooks and diners of all races had embraced it in Louisiana.

By the late s, New Orleans newspapers were already incorporating gumbo into jokes and aphorisms as a sort of well-loved local dish. Meats started to appear in published gumbo recipes around this time, too.

Eliza Leslie's Directions for Cookery includes recipes for both "Gumbo Soup," which incorporates "a round of beef" along with the okra and tomatoes, and just plain "Gumbo," the traditional stewed okra and tomatoes, which she describes as "a favourite New Orleans dish. More common than beef in gumbo, though, was chicken. The version provided to the Mobile Mercury by Mrs. Wright in is typical. First, fry a cut-up chicken "to a nice brown color," presumably in a cast iron skillet over the coals of a fire, then add a large plateful of okra.

After cooking it a little, pour over a few quarts of water and let it simmer until the chicken is tender. Wright notes, and as in most recipes of the period, she specifies that it be served with "rice boiled tender, but be careful that the grains are separate.

The Carolina Housewife includes a recipe for "Okra Soup" made with beef, okra, and tomatoes, as well as one for "New Orleans Gumbo" made with turkey or fowl and onion, to which a hundred oysters and "two teaspoons of pulverized sassafras leaves" are added. What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking , the second oldest known cookbook to have been written by an African-American, can help us answer that. Abby Fisher was born around in South Carolina, apparently the daughter of a French-born slaveowner and a Carolina-born slave.

She wound up in Alabama sometime before the Civil War, and from at least to she lived in Mobile with her husband, Alexander C. Fisher, an Alabama-born minister. In the late s the Fishers moved westward to San Francisco, where Abby Fisher made a living as a cook and operated a pickle and preserves business with her husband.

Abby Fisher dictated her book to a committee of nine residents of San Francisco her "lady friends and patrons" just a few years after she arrived on the West Coast. A great many 19th century cookbook authors borrowed recipes from any and all sources, so the fact that a recipe appears in a book published in, say, Kentucky, doesn't necessarily mean it's an old Kentucky recipe. Recipe: Chicken and Sausage Gumbo. This gumbo recipe utilizes a roux and okra to thicken the soup.

Andouille sausage makes an appearance again, and this gumbo also uses tomatoes—a nontraditional but tasty addition to the stew. Shrimp and Crab Gumbo. Seafood gives gumbo its authentic coastal flair—this recipe uses shrimp and crab but you can add whatever seafood you have on hand or is fresh at your supermarket.

Gramercy Crawfish Gumbo. Instead of making a traditional gumbo roux, this recipe toasts flour in the oven to get the same nutty flavor but without the fat , and uses okra instead as its primary thickener. A Look at Origins, Types, and Recipes. What Is Gumbo? By Antara Sinha Updated November 17, Each culture contributes to what South Louisianians recognize as its signature dish. As previously discussed, okra is used as a thickener of the West African version. Roux originated in France and is prepared by browning flour in a hot skillet in fat to a desired color light to dark.

As a thickener, Roux is undeniably the most popular method used today to prepare Louisiana gumbo.