Gumbo

• 1. Twenty-Four Pots

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  In 1803, the French governor Pierre Clement de Laussat hosted a soirée where cooks prepared 24 different gumbos. That is a single stew in two dozen versions, served at one party.

  Gumbo is a stew rooted in the United States Gulf Coast, and its New Orleans form is the official state cuisine of Louisiana. It rests on a strongly flavored stock, meat or shellfish or both, a thickener, and the Creole "holy trinity" of celery, bell peppers and onions.

  The pot raises puzzles that cooks, linguists and historians have argued over for generations. The word itself has more than one claimed ancestor. The recipe draws on the kitchens of several peoples who shared a small corner of the world. A stew of greens turns up at Lent, and two Louisiana communities each claim their own style. No conclusive evidence settles who stirred the first pot.

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• 2. Crossroads Of Cultures

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  The founding of Mobile in 1702 marked the beginning of the French colony of Louisiana. French settlers allied with tribes including the Choctaw, Alabama and Cherokee. From them they learned new cooking methods and how to recognize edible native plants.

  Slave ships began arriving in 1719. The first ones carried rice and men who were experienced in growing it. The grain adapted well, and within a few years rice was commonly grown along the Mississippi River.

  In 1721, 125 Germans settled 40 miles from New Orleans and introduced the art of making sausage. By 1746, the white population of the colony was estimated at 3,200, alongside an estimated 4,730 black people. Enslaved Africans outnumbered whites in most areas for at least the next 40 years.

  The colony passed from French to Spanish control in 1762. Spain actively recruited settlers, and about 2,000 people from the Canary Islands moved to the area south of New Orleans. Mostly fishermen, they soon sent large amounts of shrimp, crab and oysters to the New Orleans food markets. They also brought a love of well-seasoned food, including ground cayenne pepper.

  Spanish authorities also allowed many French-speaking Acadian exiles to relocate from northeastern North America. From 1755 through 1795, almost 3,000 of these settlers, soon known as Cajuns, moved to the areas south and west of New Orleans. Louisiana was secretly returned to France in 1800 and purchased by the United States in 1803. The southernmost part of the territory, including New Orleans, became a state in 1812.

  By 1800, the slave trade had brought new foods to the colony, including the African vegetable okra. Hot pepper plants arrived too, likely from Haiti. Onions and bell peppers were long part of both Spanish and African cooking, and tomatoes followed shortly after.

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• 3. Contested Origins

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  Scholars agree that gumbo began in Louisiana in the early 18th century, though they cannot agree on much else. Several plausible scenarios exist, and the most likely truth is that all of them contributed. The dish is often thought to be of mixed origins, but mostly African.

  The African case starts with okra. West Africans use the vegetable as a base for many dishes, including soups. Surviving records show that by 1764, Africans in New Orleans were mixing cooked okra with rice to make a meal. Enslaved African Americans often exchanged and combined ingredients to prepare the dish, and it became a means of community and identity.

  The name points the same way. It most likely came from Africa by way of Louisiana French, and it was probably borrowed from one of the dish's two main ingredients. In the Bambara language of West Africa, gombo means okra. Among the Bantu languages spoken by many enslaved people from Central Africa, okra was ki ngombo or quingombo in Kimbundu. Some linguists add a Choctaw thread. The Choctaw used filé, dried and ground sassafras leaves, to thicken soups and stews, and some linguists say sassafras was called komho and filé was called kombo, or kombo ashish.

  The French case centers on the fish stew bouillabaisse. Acadians cooked soups through cold winters with whatever was at hand. In Louisiana they could not find traditional ingredients such as turnips and cabbage. In this scenario they swapped in local foods, using shellfish where the old recipe called for fish.

  The Native American case rests on a different clue. Early 20th-century culinary experts, including Celestine Eustis, held that gumbo was originally a special occasion dish among native tribes. Rice was a luxury for many Cajuns in the late 18th century, so they served gumbo over corn grits, as native tribes did with their stews.

  A local legend stitches the theories together. It is known as the Frying Pan Revolt, or Petticoat Insurrection. In 1722, according to the story, French women gathered at the home of Governor Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, to protest the lack of familiar ingredients. His housekeeper, Madame Langlois, showed them how to improve the basic gumbo with okra, which the women had met through the Africans they were enslaving. The legend credits the Spanish and the Choctaw with shrimp, crawfish and filé powder.

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• 4. Anatomy Of The Pot

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  Squirrel and rabbit sound like unlikely dinner guests, but both can end up in a gumbo. Meat versions may use chicken, duck, squirrel or rabbit, sometimes with a few oysters. Seafood versions generally rely on shrimp and crab meat, again with oysters now and then. Any combination is allowed.

  Andouille sausage often joins both kinds, adding spice and substance. The key is a tender andouille, so that it does not turn chewy. Tomatoes sometimes appear in seafood gumbo, but traditionally few other vegetables are included.

  The real signature is the thickener, and there are three. Okra and filé powder were traditionally never used in the same dish, though cooks sometimes break the rule. Roux can work alone or alongside either of the others.

  Okra shows up more often in seafood gumbos than in meat ones. It is cooked first, and the other ingredients go in once the pot reaches the desired consistency. The Oxford Companion to Food reports that okra-based gumbos are fading, because the vegetable's slick texture has become less palatable to changing tastes.

  Filé behaves differently. Cooks add it only after the vegetables and the meat or seafood have finished cooking and left the heat. Many Cajuns stir it in at the table rather than in the pot. Added during boiling, it makes the gumbo too ropey. Added at the end, it leaves a slightly stringy texture.

  Roux has become the most popular thickener. It is made by cooking roughly equal parts flour and fat. Hog lard was the traditional fat, and butter has increasingly replaced it since the mid-20th century. Time is the dial: the longer a roux cooks, the darker it gets and the less thickening power it keeps. A very dark roux gives a much thinner sauce with a more intense flavor than a light one.

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• 5. Cajun Versus Creole

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  Southwestern Louisiana was populated mainly by Cajuns, descendants of French-speaking settlers expelled from Acadia in the mid-18th century. Acadia lay within the modern Canadian provinces of Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. Their style of gumbo carries the Cajun name.

  New Orleans and southeastern Louisiana gave rise to the Creole style. The name honors the Louisiana Creole people, descendants of the area's French, Spanish and enslaved Africans.

  The dark roux is the usual identifier of a gumbo, cooked until it is "a few shades from burning". That roux works with okra or filé powder. Cajun gumbo leans on it most heavily and is generally made with shellfish or fowl. Creole gumbo typically contains shellfish and a dark roux, filé, or both. Sausage or ham may go into either.

  Geography shapes the ingredients. Seafood gets more popular the nearer cooks live to the coast. In the southwest of the state, cooks often use chicken or duck with sausage. The fowl is generally not deboned, and the onions, celery and bell pepper are not strained out. Cajun gumbo is sometimes topped with parsley and green onions.

  Creole gumbo most often combines seafood, tomatoes and a thickener. Celery was rarely used in Creole gumbo before the latter half of the 20th century.

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• 6. Gumbo Of Greens

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  During Lent, Catholics were expected to abstain from meat, and cooks answered with gumbo z'herbes. The name comes from gumbo aux herbes, or "gumbo of greens". Typical greens include turnips, mustard greens and spinach.

  The preparation was laborious. The greens were cooked to mush and strained through a sieve, leaving a thick green liquid. As Lenten restrictions have relaxed, the dish has lost popularity and is very rarely served in restaurants. In modern kitchens, ham or crabmeat is occasionally added.

  Its family tree is as tangled as that of ordinary gumbo. Gumbo z'herbes may have originated with the French, Spanish and West Africans. It resembles the French potage aux herbes, meaning "soup with greens", as well as the Afro-Caribbean callaloo.

  It also bears a striking resemblance to a dish often eaten in Germany on Maundy Thursday. German Catholics, following the Lenten rules, often served a stew made from seven different greens on that day.

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• 7. The Paper Trail

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  In 1802, John Sibley wrote of "the dish they call gumbo which is made principally of the ochre into a thick kind of soop & eat with rice, it is the food of every body for dinner and supper." That is among the first written references to gumbo, and it describes a humble everyday meal.

  The first cookbook recipe came in 1824, in Mary Randolph's The Virginia House-Wife. Titled "Gumbo - A West India Dish", it simply explained how to boil okra and had little in common with the stew people know. The same book included an "Ochra Soup" of okra, onions, fowl, bacon, tomatoes and lima beans, thickened with flour. It looked closer to the Caribbean callaloo than to gumbo.

  A more familiar version appeared in 1879 in Marion Cabell Tyree's Housekeeping in Old Virginia. Her "Gumbo Filit A La Creole" was filé-based, with chicken and oysters, seasoned with allspice, cloves, red and black pepper, parsley and thyme.

  In 1881, the cookbook What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking, dictated by the former slave Abby Fisher, offered three recipes. Her "Oyster Gumbo Soup" used a filé base, while "Ochra Gumbo" and "Chicken Gumbo" used okra. Four years later, La Cuisine Creole documented eight varieties. None used sausage, but almost all contained ham.

  For generations after that, gumbo remained mostly a Gulf Coast dish. Its wider fame traces to Senator Allen Ellender, a native of Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, who often cooked gumbo for his Senate colleagues, including five American presidents. After he died in 1972, the Senate directed its cafeteria to add Louisiana Creole Gumbo, made with seafood, to the menu in his honor.

  The 1980s brought another surge, when the popularity of chef Paul Prudhomme drew attention to Creole and Cajun cooking.

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• 8. Pot And Party

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  Gumbo cooks for a minimum of three hours and often simmers all day. Meat, though not seafood, is usually browned first and set aside. Okra and roux go in ahead of the other vegetables. Seafood cooks quickly, so it waits until the end.

  The author Cynthia Lejeune Nobles writes that "proper seasoning of gumbo is essential, and in Louisiana adding just the right zing is considered an art".

  Gumbo arrives at the table with hot rice, which stretches the pot to feed more people. It is almost always ladled straight from the stove, though wealthier or fancier homes might move it to a tureen. Often gumbo and bread are the only courses. Many Cajun families add a side of potato salad, and some serve the gumbo over the potato salad instead of rice. Another method is to hard boil eggs in the gumbo pot and serve them alongside. Gumbo z'herbes takes its rice on the side.

  C. Paige Gutierrez, in Cajun Foodways, calls gumbo "an economical dish" that can feed a crowd from a small amount of meat or seafood. Nobles notes that with a big enough pot, it can be doubled or tripled. Cooks can also use up small amounts of leftover perishable meats and seafood. Leftovers keep well if frozen or refrigerated within two hours, and gumbo made without filé stores better because it will not turn stringy.

  Since the 19th century, gumbo has often appeared at social gatherings and special occasions. Local fais do-do dance parties usually served it beginning at midnight. Many families "have a gumbo", a casual gathering of friends and family with drinks and a pot of the stew. Louisianians of all races and ethnicities prepare it, in cities and the countryside alike.

  In rural Acadiana, gumbo is central to Mardi Gras. On that day, local men go from house to house begging for ingredients, in an event called courir de Mardi Gras. The community gathers while the men cook, and then everyone eats and dances until midnight, when Lent begins.

  Cooking competitions and festivals across southern Louisiana center on the dish. Bridge City, which calls itself the Gumbo Capital of the World, holds an annual Gumbo Festival. Its gumbo is cooked in a cast-iron pot 3 feet deep and 5 feet across, while a typical festival pot measures 2 feet in both depth and diameter.

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