No. 299

Chicken Okra Soup

Gumbo de Volaille

Prepare two pounds of the breast of chicken cut into half inch squares, half a pound of salted raw ham cut in quarter inch squares, half a pound of onions cut in eighth inch squares and two pounds or eight fine tomatoes plunged into boiling water to remove their skins; then cut in four, and slightly pressed to extract the seeds; four ounces of rice, picked, washed and cooked in salted water with half an ounce of butter, one pound of okras cut crosswise in pieces a quarter or three-eighths of an inch, according to their size, four ounces of finely cut up green peppers, four quarts of broth and four ounces of butter. Put the butter into the saucepan on the fire, and when it is very hot, throw in the onions to fry colorless, add the ham and let all fry together; then add the chicken meat; fry again slowly while stirring, till the butter is entirely clarified; then moisten with chicken broth made from the bones of the chicken, and four pounds of leg of veal, adding some beef stock. Remove all the fat from the soup, and boil for twenty minutes; put in the okras and green peppers, then continue cooking until the gumbo or okras are entirely done; add the tomatoes, boil a few minutes longer and season with salt, Worcestershire sauce and mushroom catsup. Place the rice in a soup tureen, and pour the soup over. This soup is frequently strained and served in consomme cups.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's gumbo is a clear okra soup rather than a roux-based Louisiana gumbo, and it is built on a scale suited to a restaurant kitchen. A few conversions and one or two points of technique are all it needs.

YieldFour quarts of broth plus roughly six pounds of solids gives 12 to 16 servings. Halving everything is straightforward; the rice is cooked separately, so scale it to the number at table.
Salted raw hamThis means an uncooked salt-cured ham, closest today to a slab of prosciutto crudo, speck, or unsmoked country ham. Ordinary deli ham is cooked and will not give the same cured savour; if you use smoked bacon instead, expect the smoke to dominate.
Mushroom catsupA thin, dark, salty mushroom extract, not tomato ketchup. Bottled mushroom ketchup is still sold in Britain; a spoonful of soy sauce plus a little mushroom soaking liquid stands in acceptably. Add it at the very end, as directed, since it is a seasoning and not a base.
The hinge: fry until the butter clarifiesFrying the onion, ham and chicken "till the butter is entirely clarified" is best read as cooking until the water thrown off by the meat and onion has gone and the fat runs clear again. Note that the onions are to be fried "colorless," so the aim is driving off moisture rather than colour.
Okra and slimeSliced okra releases mucilage, wanted here as body. Cook it until tender, as Ranhofer says, rather than to a fixed time, and add the tomatoes only afterward as directed.
The brothThe original builds a fresh stock from the chicken bones, four pounds of veal leg and beef stock. A good unsalted chicken stock reinforced with a little beef stock is a fair substitute, but keep it unsalted: the cured ham and the final seasoning both carry salt.
RiceFour ounces of raw rice is a little over half a cup. Cook it separately and put it in the tureen at the last moment, as directed; rice left standing in hot soup swells and clouds it.
Green peppersFour ounces is one medium bell pepper. Nineteenth-century "green peppers" in a New York kitchen were sweet, not hot; if you want heat, that is a departure from the recipe.
StrainingThe closing note about straining and serving in consomme cups turns the same pot into a clear soup course. Ranhofer gives no further instruction beyond straining.

A Little History

This is No. 299 from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium of the kitchen he ran at Delmonico's in New York, and it is filed under its French name, Gumbo de Volaille. The word gumbo is generally traced to a West African term for okra — ki ngombo in Bantu languages — and the dish reached New York by way of Creole Louisiana, where okra-thickened soups had been made since the eighteenth century. What is striking is how thoroughly Ranhofer has translated it into the vocabulary of a French restaurant: every ingredient is cut to a stated fraction of an inch, the stock is a proper veal-and-chicken broth rather than a pot liquor, there is no roux and no filé, and the rice is served in the tureen instead of mounded in the plate. The Worcestershire sauce and mushroom catsup are the period's standard bottled savouries, doing the work a modern cook might give to fish sauce or soy. The final line, that the soup is "frequently strained and served in consommé cups," tells you exactly where the dish had landed: a Southern country soup promoted to a clear course in a Gilded Age dining room.