Gumbo, Okra, Gombo Févi (Picayune 1916)

The second of the Picayune’s three gumbos, and the one that answers the question the first one raises. If Gumbo, Filé (Picayune 1916) has no roux and no okra, what does thicken a gumbo in this book? Here it is the okra, and only the okra — two pints of it, sliced in half-inch rounds and browned before any liquid goes near the pot.

No flour. No filé. But six large fresh tomatoes, which is the other surprise: this is a red gumbo, and it is the chicken one.

The diagnostic detail: the okra is fried, not simmered in. The book says so twice and gives you the reason — okra scorches easily, and “the least taste of a ‘scorch’ spoils the flavor of the gumbo.” Many Creole cooks fried the okra in a separate pan for exactly that reason. The browning is not incidental; it is what takes the rope out of the okra and puts flavour in.

UNTESTED — the 1916 text made legible, not a reconstruction.

Ingredients

• 1 chicken, cleaned and cut up
• 2 large slices ham, cut into small squares or dice
• 2 pints okra (about fifty pods), stemmed and sliced into 1/2 inch rounds
• 6 large fresh tomatoes, skinned and chopped fine — SAVE THE JUICE
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 sprig thyme or parsley, chopped
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/2 pod red pepper, seeds removed
• 1 tablespoon lard (or 2 level spoons butter)
• About 3 quarts boiling water
• Salt and cayenne to taste
• TO SERVE, IN A SEPARATE DISH
• Boiled rice, grains standing well apart

Directions

Key ingredients

Salt · Black Pepper

1. Prep first, all of it. Skin and chop the tomatoes and keep the juice separate — it goes in later, on purpose. Wash and stem the okra and slice it into thin half-inch layers. Dice the ham; chop the onion, parsley and thyme.
2. Chicken and ham, covered, ten minutes. Lard into the soup kettle; when hot, add the chicken and the ham, cover closely, simmer about ten minutes.
3. Aromatics and the chopped tomato flesh. Add the onion, parsley, thyme and tomatoes, stirring frequently to prevent scorching.
4. Now the okra, and this is the step that matters. Add the sliced okra and brown it. Stir it constantly. Okra is delicate and catches fast, and one scorched patch flavours the entire pot. -> photo 1
5. The easier route the book endorses: fry the okra by itself in a frying pan, seasoned with the pepper, cayenne and salt, and add it to the chicken once it is browned. “Equally good results may be obtained with less trouble” the other way — but only if you stand there and stir.
6. The tomato juice goes in after the okra browns, not with the flesh. The book says it “imparts a superior flavor” added at this point. Adding it earlier would stew the okra instead of browning it, which is presumably the real reason.
7. Water, then an hour on the back of the stove. About three quarts of boiling water. Set it back and let it simmer gently about an hour. Season with salt and cayenne. Serve hot with rice boiled separately.
8. Substitutions the book allows: the remains of a turkey in place of the chicken; or, “in families where it is not possible to procure a fowl,” a round steak of beef or veal chopped fine. It adds, flatly, that “it must always be borne in mind that the Chicken Gumbo has the best flavor.”
9. Compare with Gumbo, Filé (Picayune 1916) — same book, same chapter, no okra and no tomato in it at all.

Notes

Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t The backbone is The Picayune’s Creole Cook Book, fifth edition, published by The Times-Picayune in New Orleans in 1916 and copyrighted 1901, 1906, 1910 and 1916. The scan is the Cornell University copy, and it is in our Reference Library: library.fubsypoly.com/picayunes-creole-cook-book-1916.pdf I read the quantities off the page images rather than the OCR. The optical text of this book renders every fraction as a hyphenated pair — 1-2 for a half, 1 1-2 for one and a half — and it misread the 5 eggs in Pain Perdu as a letter B. If you go back to the scan yourself, go to the page image. UNTESTED. I have not cooked this version. The measurements are the book’s, converted to modern phrasing but not re-proportioned, and where the original is vague I have said so rather than inventing a number.

The name Févi is the okra. The book’s own soup chapter has a Potage de Févi built the same way. So the dish is named for its thickener, which is the clearest possible signal that the thickener is the point — a Gombo Févi with filé stirred into it would be a contradiction in terms.

Three gumbos, three thickeners Read across the chapter and the structure is obvious once you see it:

• Gumbo Filé (chicken, oysters) — no roux, no okra, filé off the heat.
• Gombo Févi (this one) — no roux, no filé, okra and tomato.
• Oyster and Shrimp Gumbo — brown roux and filé, no okra. Nowhere do okra and filé appear together, and the book says outright under Shrimp Gumbo that it is a choice: “either ‘File’ or Okra may be used in the combination.”

Variations The book gives a Crab Gumbo on the same page with an almost identical ingredient list — a dozen crabs in place of the chicken, same okra, same six tomatoes — and calls it “a great fast-day or ‘maigre’ dish with the Creoles.” Hard or soft-shell both work; the book prefers hard-shell as cheaper and more reliably available.

Sourcing and gear Fifty pods is a lot of okra and it wants to be fresh — frozen sliced okra is already wet and will steam rather than brown, which defeats the one technique this recipe is built on. If frozen is what you have, thaw and dry it hard first, and fry it separately in the pan.

Still open Six large tomatoes in a chicken gumbo cuts against the modern habit of treating tomato in gumbo as a Creole-vs-Cajun marker. I have not traced when that distinction was first drawn or by whom, and I am not going to assert it from one cookbook.