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Boiled Onions (Rice in a mound in the centre)
the rice in a mound in the centre of a dish, add the salt, pepper, and sassafras to the okra, boil up once, and pour it around the rice.
This makes a very good and sightly dish. It may be served as a separate course, alone, or as an accompaniment to chicken, mutton or veal.
The page as printed is the tail end of a recipe — the heading ("Boiled Onions") belongs to the entry above it, and the ingredient list and first steps for what is plainly an okra-and-rice dish have been lost in the typesetting. What survives is the finishing and serving method, which is still worth reading.
- What the dish actually isDespite the heading, this is stewed okra flavoured with sassafras, spooned around a mound of boiled rice. The okra-and-sassafras combination points towards the Creole gumbo tradition, though here it is served dry-ish rather than as a soup.
- Sassafras means filéSassafras means file -- Added at the end of cooking as a seasoning, "sassafras" here is almost certainly powdered dried sassafras leaf — file — rather than the root or bark that the word usually denoted in nineteenth-century American cookery. Modern file powder is the same product and is sold with the Creole seasonings.
- The hinge: do not boil the filéThe instruction to "boil up once" after adding the sassafras is the one line to ignore. Filé turns stringy and ropy the moment it boils; stir it in off the heat, or at a bare simmer, and serve immediately.
- Okra timingThe lost portion would have had the okra stewed until tender. Young pods need roughly 10 minutes; the mucilage some cooks object to is part of the point here, since it is what thickens the sauce poured round the rice.
- Mounding the ricePack hot cooked rice into a teacup or small bowl and invert it onto the warmed serving dish. It holds its shape only while hot, so the okra should be ready before the rice is turned out.
- Seasoning orderSalt and pepper are added at the very end here, with the sassafras, rather than to the stewing liquid.
- YieldNo quantities survive on the page. As a side for chicken, mutton or veal, reckon on about a pound of okra and three cups of cooked rice for four to six.
File — dried and powdered sassafras leaf — came into Louisiana cooking from the Choctaw, who used it as a thickener and seasoning long before it reached Creole kitchens, and okra came with the West African trade; the two thickeners have coexisted in gumbo ever since, more often as alternatives than as partners. This recipe uses both at once. The note that the dish may be served "as a separate course, alone" reflects an argument common in vegetable cookery of the period, that vegetables could carry a course rather than garnish the meat. One modern difference: the file sold today is leaf only, since safrole — present in sassafras root bark and oil — was barred from use as a food additive in the United States in 1960.