Finally transcribing the handwritten notes I took at the last family gathering (Grandma’s birthday at the end of February this year).
above one section, I wrote the phrase “never written down.” That refers to Mae’s’s gumbo recipes, right?
Mae put allspice balls in her chicken gumbo and so did Grandma, according to my mother. My mother does not because she doesn’t like them. I also wrote “also oysters,” but I don’t know if that referred to Mae or not.. I do remember Grandma’s gumbo with oysters.
I think we were definitely saying Grandma’s gumbo recipe didn’t ultimately hail from either what we’d call the Creole camp or the Cajun camp decisively. Matter of fact, I suspect the recipe at any given moment had a lot more to do with what was easily available and inexpensive rather than with any kind of gumbo ideology. Her family had been in Pensacola for a good while at that point and it makes sense to me that Pensacola might have its own distinct character or distinctions or divisions, perhaps. And seafood was cheap and plentiful, and sassafras grew wherever. And probably most folks had more than one gumbo recipe to fit available ingredients, seasons of the year, company dinner size, whether or not it’s Lent, etc.
The only thing all these family recipes seem to agree on with gumbo is the roux. I don’t think they even all agree on whether or not to serve it with rice.
I mean, Mae made okra gumbo with tomatoes that Aunt Betsy remembers as being quite thick. She also made chicken gumbo and seafood gumbo. If I wrote this all down correctly, that is at least three distinct gumbo recipes.
But on the next page I wrote that Aunt Betsy said that Mae made chicken and oyster gumbo and that was thinner and used file (imagine an accent ague there on that e, sorry). [Do I have *this* right, family?] So is that 1. chicken and oyster gumbo and 2. seafood gumbo with okra and tomato? Or something else? Mom said Mae made her own file (accent ague), ground the leaves in a Mouli grinder, and that she (Mom) has one. Of course I had to google what that was.
I wrote down that Grandma never used tomatoes (or okra) in her gumbo. So all of this raised in my mind a pressing question – why did Grandma’s gumbo recipe call for tomato ketchup? And why ketchup and not just tomatoes? And since her recipe seems to involve some deviation from the way her mother and sisters had prepared it in Pensacola, *where did this recipe come from?* That’s what I was dying to know.
So a few things. First, on returning to said recipe, Grandma apparently *did* use tomatoes in her gumbo after all, at least her seafood gumbo. Why did I write down several times that she didn’t? Well, ’cause somebody told me that. Who told me that and why?!
Also of note – the “Lea & Perrins” instead of just Worcestershire sounds like her daddy. PaPa always called for it by name and would accept no substitutions. Had to be Lea & Perrins. The dash of Mrs. Dash sounds like Grandma. Grandma put a dash of Mrs. Dash in flippin’ everything.
Second, the gumbo-with-ketchup recipe apparently came from the neighbors. So Aunt Iris and Uncle Tommy McPhillips lived across from Grandma’s house on Victory Drive. Next to them on the corner was Aunt Sarah and Uncle Mike and Aunt Lizzie (who might have been Sarah’s aunt). That’s the Aunt Lizzie of the recipe Aunt Lizzie’s Pound Cake from Dio’s scrapbook.
Iris and Irene Moore were twins who lived down the street. Their mother was Irene Moore. They were relatives of Aunt Iris and Big Irene from around the corner. [Do I have this right, family? This seems… convoluted. Or needlessly repetitive. Or just wrong. or something.]
And the gumbo with ketchup recipe came from Aunt Iris and Big Irene. Now I should have asked y’all where Iris and Irene were from, because that’s important to the story and history of the gumbo. But if i did ask you and I did get an answer, i don’t seem to have written it down 
Third, I looked at Aunt Joyce’s again to see if we could trace any patterns at all here, and look at that — KETCHUP.
I’m wearing my skeptical face now. Anyway, juice of a lemon in common, most seasonings in common, and in fact she and her sister could have cribbed off each other here, really – theyr’e so similar. But Aunt Joyce used okra as well in this seafood gumbo, no file, yes oysters.
So now the genealogy of the entree of ketchup into the family gumbo no longer seems like the right question. It wasn’t apparently the very odd thing that I was led to believe it was. And now I’m not so sure it matters where those neighbors were from.
Anyway, okra makes sense to me in a gumbo with tomatoes. And I am agnostic on the question of tomatoes more generally. I think both tomato and non-tomato gumbos have their place. But y’all, I still don’t get why the hell you would put ketchup in the gumbo.
Now looking at Grandaddy’s side of the family, his sister Aunt Jean seemed to think like I do – if we are gonna do tomatoes, just make up your mind to do so and figure it out with what you have. I see no evidence she would put in tomato paste AND tomatoes, or tomatoes AND ketchup, or etc.
She’s yes on the okra, yes on the file, dark on the roux, and this is actually a chicken and seafood gumbo – or at least seafood with possibility of chicken. I’m a little wary on the crab boil element, but other than that, this is pretty much how I’d make gumbo (like my mother, I give the oysters a pass). Well, and I would not cook my onion in the microwave. But anyway – I “get” this one. (I have never in my life felt like I could afford all the seafood to make a big old pot of seafood gumbo. So this is all theoretical on my part lol… I only make chicken and sausage gumbo, which I’ll deal with next time I guess.)
Finally, I didn’t get too far with tracking down gumbo ketchup clues with this, at least not yet. But in the looking, I found a ketchup recipe, at least, that was probably copied around 1900 and has survived in the papers of Mobile’s German Relief Association. Apparently ketchup recipes at the time were pretty different to what they are now.
I imagine our ketchup today is a lot sweeter and tangier and altogether noticeably different. So it’s possible that ketchup in gumbo wouldn’t have seemed as weird then as it does to me now. This is really kinda more like a savory tomato paste or something??
I don’t know. Somebody make this antique ketchup and report back to us!
And if you know why people use modern ketchup in gumbo instead of tomato paste or whatever, please say!
Sources
- Daniels, George. “From the Archives: Cookin’ with History… an Old South Catsup Recipe.” Gulf Coast Historical Review, 1.1, Fall 1985. 79.
Notes:
For any non-family wandering by actually looking for a recipe, some of these are kind of taciturn or assume you know certain things already on some of the details. If you haven’t ever made gumbo before, you probably want to start with a recipe that explains some more details than these. This one at Scrumptious
Chef has some good notes that might be helpful.
Karma Soup 