No. 313

Gumbo or Okra with Hard Crabs, Creole Style

Gombo aux Crabes durs a la Creole

Chop up a quarter of a pound of fat pork, put it into a saucepan on the fire, adding half a pound of onions cut in dice, and a pound of lean beef in squares; fry all together, then add six peeled tomatoes cut in two, two pounds of minced young okras, twelve small cooked crabs, suppressing the shells and lungs, wash them thoroughly and split them in four, one clove of garlic, three green peppers minced up fine, six quarts of broth, salt, pepper and a little curry; boil all up till well cooked, the thicken with six tablespoonfuls of arrowroot dissolved in cold water. Serve separately some rice cooked in twice its quantity of water, with salt; fill some buttered molds (No. 5, Fig. 137), with this, set it in a slow oven, unmold and serve at the same time as the soup.

← No. 312 Gnocquis Soup a la Pagioli Soups & Broths No. 314 Gumbo or Okra with Soft Shell Crabs →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer is writing for a Delmonico's brigade, so the quantities are banquet-scale and the technique is French even though the dish is Creole. Scale it down before anything else.

Yield and scalingSix quarts of broth plus the solids makes something like 20 servings. Quartering the whole recipe gives a comfortable pot for six: 1 oz fat pork, 2 oz onion, 4 oz beef, 1 1/2 tomatoes, 8 oz okra, 3 crabs, 6 cups stock.
The crabs"Twelve small cooked crabs" means hard-shell crabs, boiled and cooled; blue crab is the likely candidate but Ranhofer does not say. "Suppressing the shells and lungs" is the gills, the feathery grey fingers under the top shell; also scrape out the yellow hepatopancreas if it bothers you. Split the bodies in four, leave the claws attached, and add them in the last 10 minutes so the meat does not shred away.
Okra is the thickenerTwo pounds of sliced young okra cooked into the pot is what gives gumbo its body. Slice it thin, and if the mucilage puts you off, sear the slices in a dry hot pan first. Do not add file powder to this one; the recipe does not call for it, and it would go ropy on top of the okra anyway.
ArrowrootSix tablespoons of arrowroot slaked in cold water is a period thickener that sets clear and slick. It also breaks down if held at a hard boil or reheated. A modern Creole cook would be more likely to use a dark roux made at the start with the pork fat and flour; if you keep the arrowroot, stir it in off a rolling boil and serve at once.
"A little curry"Most likely commercial curry powder, which nineteenth-century French professional kitchens did use as a warm seasoning rather than for an Indian flavour. A teaspoon in the scaled-down pot is plenty. Cayenne and a bay leaf would be the more usual Louisiana reading.
Green peppersRead as fresh green bell peppers, minced, rather than chilies, though the recipe does not specify. Three of them for the full batch, with the onion and garlic, make the vegetable base; there is no celery here, so this is not the Creole trinity.
Salt porkA quarter pound of fat pork, chopped and rendered, starts the pot; salt pork is the likely reading. Unsmoked pork belly or thick-cut bacon works; if you use bacon, expect the smoke to show, and hold back on salt until the end since both the pork and the broth carry it.
The rice molds and the slow oven"A slow oven" is roughly 275-325F. The buttered molds Ranhofer points to (No. 5, Fig. 137) are packed with cooked rice, warmed through for 15-20 minutes, then turned out beside the bowl. A ramekin or a half-cup measure does the same job; press the rice firmly or it will collapse on unmolding.
Cooking time"Boil all up till well cooked" means a steady simmer of about 45 minutes to an hour, long enough to soften the okra and the diced beef. Keep the crab out until near the end.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its several gumbos are a reminder that Creole cooking had already travelled well beyond Louisiana by the end of the century. Ranhofer treats it as a French chef would: the okra and crab and green pepper are Gulf Coast, but the arrowroot liaison, the diced onions and the molded rice turned out beside the bowl are all classical service. Okra itself came to the Americas from West Africa, and the word gumbo is generally traced to a Bantu term for the plant / ki ngombo / though the competing derivation from Choctaw kombo, for file, has long been argued alongside it. Hard-shell blue crab was cheap and abundant on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts in Ranhofer's day, which is why he can call for twelve of them without comment.