Chicken Gumbo
1 chicken or old fowl; 2 slices breakfast bacon; 1 large onion; 1 pint okra, cut small; 1 cup green corn; 1 green pepper; 1 can or 1 quart tomatoes; 2 quarts hot water; 1 teaspoon salt; 1/4 teaspoon pepper; 1 bay leaf; 1 teaspoon curry; 1 tablespoonful gumbo filee powder.
Dress and cut up the chicken; wash and wipe it. Fry the sliced onion with the bacon until only slightly brown. Put this in the kettle with the chicken, pour in the water and cook until very tender, and the bones will fall out. Take the chicken out and remove all the bones, skim fat, and cut the meat in small bits. Strain the liquor through a coarse strainer, return the chicken, put in all the vegetables, the curry powder and bay leaf, and cook until the okra begins to "rope"; then add the gumbo filee powder.
Serve with plain boiled rice or rice balls. The gumbo filee powder may be obtained in bottles at all first-class grocers'.
A long-simmered fowl broth thickened twice over, first by okra and then by sassafras. The order of those two steps is the whole recipe.
- Filé goes in off the heatFile is best added off the heat -- sassafras file can turn stringy if it boils, though the recipe itself simply says to add it. Pull the pot from the burner, stir the tablespoon of powder in, cover, and let it stand two or three minutes before serving.
- What "rope" meansThe okra is done when its liquid pulls into visible threads off the spoon; the recipe gives no time, but expect a good stretch of gentle simmering. That viscosity is the point here, not a fault.
- An old fowlA laying hen past production, tough and deeply flavored. Supermarkets rarely stock one; a 4 to 5 lb stewing hen from a butcher is closest, and a regular roasting chicken will do, reaching the falling-off-the-bone stage the recipe asks for well before an old bird would.
- Breakfast baconThin-sliced streaky bacon, the ordinary kind. Two slices are there for fat and smoke, not bulk.
- Green cornFresh sweet corn cut from the cob, roughly two ears for the cup called for. Frozen kernels substitute directly; canned corn is softer than intended.
- Quantities in modern terms1 pint sliced okra is roughly 7 oz. 1 quart tomatoes is approximately two 14.5 oz cans with their juice, a little short of the full measure.
- Curry powderNot necessarily a mistake or a stray. Curry powder turns up in a number of American gumbo recipes of this period; use a mild blend so it sits under the sassafras rather than over it.
- Yield and serviceServes eight generously as a first course, six as a supper. Mound the boiled rice in the bowl and ladle the gumbo around it so the grains do not go to paste.