French Gumbo
Fry one nice chicken. While this is frying slice three quarts of okra with a little green pepper (or red, if no green is to be had). Salt and flour as you would the chicken. When chicken is brown, take out and throw okra into the same lard; fry until brown. Have ready one gallon of boiling water; pour over okra. Let it boil one-half hour, then put in chicken, and set back to simmer until it is cooked down enough for use. Serve with boiled rice in the center of each plate (one spoonful). -Mrs. John Durst.
A straightforward okra gumbo with no roux and no filé: the thickening comes entirely from okra broken down by long frying and a long simmer. Two things decide whether it works — how far you brown the okra, and how far you reduce the pot.
- The hinge: brown the okra properlyThree quarts of sliced okra thrown into hot fat will slime badly before it browns, and the temptation is to pull it early. Keep it moving over medium-high heat for 20 to 30 minutes until the strings are gone and the slices are genuinely brown and dry-looking. Nothing later in the recipe will fix under-fried okra.
- Quantities in modern termsThree quarts of sliced okra is roughly 3 lb trimmed pods. One gallon of boiling water is 16 cups, which is a lot of liquid for one chicken — the instruction to "cook down enough for use" means you are expected to reduce it substantially, by a third or more.
- "One nice chicken"A 3 1/2 to 4 lb bird, cut into eight pieces. Chickens of the period were often older and tougher than a modern market bird, which may be part of why the simmer is left open-ended; a supermarket bird will be tender in 40 to 45 minutes, and the reduction, not the meat, sets the timing.
- Salt and flour as you would the chickenThis means dredging: season the okra and pepper with salt and toss with flour before frying, exactly as for the chicken. That flour is the only thickener in the dish beyond the okra itself.
- The fatLard is what the original calls for and it browns well at frying heat. Neutral oil, bacon fat, or a mix works; you need enough to shallow-fry the chicken, and the browned fond left behind is the base of the flavor.
- Green pepper"A little green pepper (or red)" is a sweet bell pepper, not a chile — one pepper, diced. Hot pepper, if wanted, belongs at the table.
- Yield and servingServes six to eight generously as a soup course. The rice is cooked separately and mounded in the plate — about a spoonful per serving — with the gumbo ladled around it, which is still the standard Louisiana service.
Okra gumbo without roux or file is the oldest and plainest branch of the dish, and the one that keeps closest to its name: gumbo is generally traced to a West African word for okra, and the pod itself came to the Gulf Coast with the transatlantic slave trade. The reason for the title "French Gumbo" is not explained by the recipe itself. The contributed-recipe format, with Mrs. John Durst's name attached, is typical of community compilations assembled from readers and club members, which may be why measurements arrive in quarts and gallons and the cooking time ends when the cook decides the pot is right.