Gumbo Filé (Mrs. Phillips' way)

Mrs. Eugenia Phillips

Disjoint and cut up a fowl. Fry in pan with onion cut up. Put in a soup pot knuckle of veal, fried fowl covered in 3 1-2 quarts of cold water, let it simmer on back of range about six hours, strain soup and skim off all grease, cut up white meat of chicken and put in stock with a quart or more of oysters, add salt, cayenne pepper, white pepper. When at boiling point sprinkle in, or sift in, powdered filet enough to thicken it.

For very many years Mrs. Phillips had the most elegant table and the most delicious dishes in Washington, D. C. No one could rival her in taste and daintiness; her hospitality was boundless.

For the Modern Kitchen

A second family’s take on filé gumbo, built on a long-simmered veal-and-fowl stock. The filé rule is the same as ever — keep it away from a hard boil.

“A knuckle of veal”A veal shank or knuckle bone — its gelatin gives the stock body. A modern cook can use veal or beef shank, or even chicken backs.
The long simmer“On the back of the range about six hours” means a low, gentle simmer — the back of a wood stove was its coolest spot. A 3½-quart pot reduces and deepens over that time.
Sift the filé in at the end“When at boiling point sprinkle in” is best done off the heat: pull the pot, sift in the powdered filé, stir, and serve. Boiling makes it stringy.
The oystersAdd them (and their liquor) in the last few minutes — they need only to plump, not cook hard.

A Little History

That the book prints two filé gumbos side by side — one from Louise Livingston Hunt, this one from Mrs. Eugenia Phillips — is itself the point. In Créole New Orleans, gumbo was less a fixed recipe than a family signature, each household guarding its own balance of stock, seasoning, and thickener. Eugenia Phillips was a well-known Southern figure of the Civil War era, twice arrested by Union authorities for her Confederate sympathies; that her gumbo was worth recording says something about how a great pot of it could outlast even its cook’s notoriety.

From page 1 of the 1904 edition.

Original pages from the book