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Chicken Gumbo, Louisianaise
Half a boned fowl, one small carrot, one small white turnip, one small onion, half green pepper, one leek, two tablespoons raw rice, two quarts and a half hot broth four small peeled tomatoes, twelve good-sized, sound, fresh okras. Cut the fowl into small square pieces. Cut also the carrot, turnip, onion, green pepper and leeks into quarter-inch-square pieces and place them in a saucepan with one ounce butter. Slowly brown them for ten minutes, add the rice and any chicken bones on hand; lightly mix, then moisten with the hot broth. Season with one level tablespoon salt, cover the pan and boil for thirty minutes. Cut the tomatoes and okras into small pieces and add them to the soup. Boil for thirty minutes more. Remove the bones. Pour the soup into a hot soup tureen and serve.
A soup-style gumbo with no roux and no filé, thickened only by okra and rice. The instructions are sound but the quantities assume a period kitchen with a stockpot of broth always going.
- Half a boned fowlA "fowl" was a mature stewing bird rather than a young chicken, so half of one boned out gives roughly 1 to 1 1/2 lb of meat. Use thighs and legs from a whole chicken rather than breast; the long boil will dry lean meat out badly.
- Two quarts and a half of brothThat is 10 cups. If you are using commercial stock, hold back the tablespoon of salt until the end, as the recipe assumes unsalted homemade broth reduced over an hour of boiling.
- Okra is the thickenerTwelve good-sized pods, sliced, are the only body in the pot besides two tablespoons of rice. Do not trim them down or substitute frozen cut okra measured by volume, or the soup will stay thin. Cooking them a full half hour is deliberate here: the cut edges release the mucilage that gives gumbo its texture.
- "Boil" means simmer"Boil" -- the recipe says boil twice, but a hard boil for an hour will shred the chicken and cloud the broth. A bare simmer, covered, is safer; skim once after the vegetables go in.
- The rice will disappearTwo tablespoons of raw rice cooked for a full hour dissolves into the broth and acts as a thickener rather than a garnish. If you want distinct grains, cook rice separately and spoon it into the bowls.
- Quarter-inch diceThe uniform small cut matters more than it looks. Carrot, turnip, onion, pepper and leek all have to be tender at the same moment, and the ten-minute browning in butter adds depth that would otherwise come from a roux.
- Chicken bonesAdd whatever bones you have, as instructed, then remove them before serving.
- YieldAbout 8 to 10 servings as a first course, less if it is the meal. Serve it in warmed bowls; a soup this thin loses heat quickly.
Filippini's collection ranges across national cuisines from a New York restaurant kitchen, and this entry shows what "Louisianaise" meant to a professional chef of that milieu around 1900: okra, tomato and rice in a chicken broth, executed with a French mirepoix and a French vocabulary. What is missing is telling. There is no dark roux, no filé powder, no andouille or shrimp, and no chile heat beyond half a green pepper. The name gumbo is generally traced to a West African word for okra, and okra is the one element the recipe treats as non-negotiable, insisting on twelve pods that are sound and fresh. Read alongside the Creole cookbooks published in New Orleans in 1885 and 1900, it is a useful record of how a regional American dish traveled north and was rewritten in the idiom of the classical kitchen brigade.