Gumbo, Oyster, Gombo aux Huîtres (Picayune 1916)

The third gumbo, and the only one in the book that uses both of its thickening ideas: a brown roux at the start and filé at the end. No okra. No chicken. Four dozen oysters and two quarts of their own liquor, which is what actually makes it taste of anything — there is no stock in this recipe besides the oysters’ water and a quart of plain hot water.

It is also the fastest of the three by a distance. Half an hour, most of which is the roux.

The diagnostic detail, and it is an odd one: the printed fat-to-flour ratio is one teaspoonful of lard to two tablespoonfuls of flour — roughly one part fat to six of flour, which is not a roux ratio anywhere else in the book or anywhere else at all. I read the page image twice. It really says teaspoonful. See the note below before you make it; I have left it as printed rather than quietly correcting the book.

UNTESTED, and of the seven this is the one I would most want to cook before trusting.

Ingredients

• 4 dozen oysters, well drained — KEEP the liquor
• 2 quarts oyster liquor, heated
• 1 quart hot water
• 1 large white onion, chopped
• Parsley, thyme and bay leaf, chopped

Salt and pepper to taste

• THE ROUX — see the note, this is the book’s printed ratio
• 1 teaspoon lard or butter
• 2 tablespoons flour

TO FINISH — OFF THE HEAT

• 2 tablespoons filé (powdered sassafras leaf)
• TO SERVE, IN A SEPARATE DISH
• Boiled rice — allow 6 to 8 oysters per person

Directions

Key ingredients

Salt · Black Pepper · Bacon Grease

1. Make a brown roux. Lard into the kettle; when hot, add the flour and cook to a brown “without burning”. The book’s standing rule applies here and it is strict — a delicate brown, never a dark one, and if it smells scorched at all you throw it out and wash the pan. See Roux, Brown and White, Creole (Picayune 1916) for the full rule. -> photo 1
2. Onion and parsley into the roux. Fry them; when brown, add the chopped bay leaf.
3. Liquid. Pour in the hot oyster liquor, then the hot water. Bring it to a good boil.
4. Oysters, three minutes, and drain them first. Add the well-drained oysters just before serving — and drain them without pouring water over them, which would rinse away the flavour you kept the liquor for. Cook about three minutes longer.
5. Off the stove, then the filé. Take the pot off the heat and stir in two tablespoonfuls of filé gradually. Have the tureen ready in a bain-marie, pour in, cover, and bring it to the table immediately. Once filé is in, this pot cannot be reheated.
6. Serve with boiled rice, six to eight oysters to a person.
7. ⚠ On the oysters: three minutes in boiling liquid is a real cook, but oysters are oysters — if you or anyone at the table is immunocompromised, pregnant, or has liver disease, that is the population Vibrio vulnificus actually hurts, and lightly cooked shellfish is not the place to take the risk.

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 roux ratio, and why I did not fix it One teaspoonful of fat to two tablespoonfuls of flour is a sixth of the fat you need to wet that much flour. Every other roux in the book is one to one, and the Shrimp Gumbo Filé printed a few inches away on the very same page says 1 tablespoonful of lard or butter, 1 tablespoonful of flour. So the internal evidence says compositor’s error. I have left it as printed because I have not compared the 1901, 1906 or 1910 editions, and “this is obviously a typo” is exactly the kind of confident guess that turns a transcription into a rewrite. If you cook it, use a tablespoon of fat to a tablespoon of flour and you will be making what the rest of the book plainly means. If you have an earlier edition to hand, I would like to know which way it reads.

The one gumbo that uses both thickeners This is the interesting structural fact about the chapter. The chicken gumbos use exactly one thickener each and no flour at all. The seafood gumbos are where the roux lives — and this one then finishes with filé on top of it. So in this book the roux is not the foundation of gumbo as a category; it is a feature of the seafood versions.

Two quarts of oyster liquor is the real recipe Four dozen oysters will not give you two quarts of liquor. This is a recipe written for people buying oysters shucked by the quart from the French Market, liquor included, which is how New Orleans bought them. Buying shucked oysters in tubs is the modern equivalent; bottled clam juice is the usual stand-in and it is not the same thing, being much saltier. Taste before you add any salt at all.

Variations in the same chapter Shrimp Gumbo is built identically — one tablespoonful each of lard and flour, a hundred lake shrimp, the same filé finish. The book insists on lake shrimp over river shrimp “the river shrimp being too small and delicate,” and warns that in a basketful there are always smaller shrimp “which, when cooked, amount to little or nothing.”

Still open Whether the teaspoonful is a misprint. Earlier editions not consulted; no errata found.