re: No Roux Gumbo (aka Chauvin-Style) w/Pics

quote:

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How much is a "slew"? Was gumbo made without a roux by most of the early acadians?

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Tens of thousands, at least. It's a common enough concept in the Houma/Thib/south Lafourche area, home to an aggregate population of around 200K ppl.

The early Acadians didn't know a damn thing about gumbo when they landed in LA. The word itself, which referenced okra pods, is Bantu & first used (in Western sources) in print around 1805. In LA colonial times, flour was an expensive import, especially for rural/farming people who lived away from big port cities--and who lived in close proximity with native peoples as well as enslaved Africans. A close reading of early LA recipes/cookbooks referencing gumbo will turn up loads without a roux, as well as plenty of dishes that a modern eater might not consider a "real" gumbo.

Food rarely stays the same for very long, like so many aspects of culture, and it is very limiting to think of dishes as a fixed, prescribed entities. LA cooking, and Cajun cooking especially, is not a canonical construct (unlike, say, Careme's codification of French haute cuisine, which was upheld by Escoffier). Virtually everthing in traditional LA cooking is a borrowed mash-up of other people's ideas & traditions.

A key to Cajun cultural persistence is its absorptive nature--we borrow happily from whoever lives next door & give it our own seasoning. We don't bother wondering if something is Cajun or not--it IS cajun because we make it so in the doing. To wit, Cajun eggrolls...boudin burritos....king cakes (which weren't widely sold outside of NOLA when I was a kid in the 1970s), king cakes stuffed w/boudin...gumbo made with whatever floats, flies, swims, or scratches in the backyard, including hot dogs, spam, boiled eggs, and chicken feet...

Authenticity is a meaningless concept in the food world.