A gumbo of gumbos

While I mostly highlight recipes that sound terrible and/or the unfortunate cultural attitudes that show up in old cookbooks, sometimes I just like to see how a dish can be interpreted in a variety of ways. That's why today we're looking at a series of gumbos from River Road Recipes II: A Second Helping (The Junior League of Baton Rouge, Louisiana; January 1977 fourth printing).

Before I went through this book, I assumed gumbo was a stew thickened with okra that usually had seafood and celery, bell, peppers, and onions as the main components. Some Baton Rouge residents have a far more inclusive definition, though, as the Gumbo Vert recipe suggests.

This is just veggies-- cabbage, spinach, and onions (only one of them a component of the holy trinity that one might expect)-- with pickled pork in a flour-thickened sauce. Mrs. James Hymel, Jr., must have realized it wasn't what most others would recognize as a gumbo, so there's a tiny note at the bottom: "This is not a form of soup as one would think of as gumbo. It is called gumbo due to the fact that it is a mixture of things-- in this case green vegetables."

Most of the recipes are much closer to what I would expect, though. Seafood Gumbo was so popular that the book offers two different versions. The first version uses bacon drippings to start the roux and serves 20.

Plus it fortifies the tomatoes with some catsup. This version comes from Mrs. Robert Witcher in New York, so I wonder if it discredits the recipe. (I'm not sure why they'd have a recipe from a random person in New York, though, so maybe Mrs. Witcher originally lived in Baton Rouge and had to move away but still contributed to her old Junior League friends' cookbook.)

The Seafood Gumbo II starts with an oil-based roux and serves 8-10.

No catsup to supplement the tomatoes in this version, but it includes allspice berries, so it might have still been going for a slightly catsup-y taste? I would not have guessed that that was desirable, but it seems to be....

For those who feel intimidated by the huge ingredient lists for the seafood gumbos, there's a Shrimp, Crab, and Okra Gumbo. 

This version is tomato-free and uses filé in addition to okra.

For the hunters, there's a Duck and Sausage Gumbo.

This one, too, omits the tomatoes, and it goes all-in on the filé, leaving out the okra entirely.

If the list seems a bit empty without crawfish, don't worry! There's a Crawfish Filé Gumbo too.

(I have to admire the way the editors made sure to consistently add the accent aigu to the "e" in "filé"! This recipe even includes the accent on sauté.) Crawfish Filé Gumbo goes with Ro-Tel tomatoes to get a bit more kick, omits the okra, and lets diners add filé  to taste. (Interesting that an ingredient from the title is actually just an optional add-on at the end.)

Okay, and if you're really disappointed that this post doesn't have anything too outlandish (assuming you're not among the people who have VERY STRONG VIEWS about whether tomatoes belong in gumbo, or whether it's acceptable to use smoked sausage rather than a genuine Cajun sausage in a gumbo, or whether...), then here's something at least kind of odd to reset your palate.

I'm not sure what Bleu Cheese Salad Sherbert (Yes-- spelled with two "r"s!) would be like, exactly-- might actually be a pretty good tangy/ creamy surprise between courses-- but if you don't know what to expect, that first bite would probably be pretty alarming! 

So... Gumbo! This is a real mixture of a post, so I'm going to declare it is a gumbo as well! Mrs. James Hymel, Jr. might not care.