A great many 19th century cookbook authors borrowed recipes from any and all sources, so the fact that a recipe appears in a book published in, say, Kentucky, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s an old Kentucky recipe. The author may very well have borrowed it from an English cookbook, and there’s not even a guarantee that he or she had actually tried cooking it.
In Abby Fisher’s case, it is much more likely that a recipe that appears in her book is something she learned to cook during her years in Alabama and South Carolina, and that she actually cooked it from memory on a regular basis. And that makes her three recipes for gumbo all the more interesting to historians.
There’s “Ochra Gumbo” with cut okra stewed in beef broth seasoned with just salt and pepper and served with “dry boiled rice.” Her “Chicken Gumbo” is made of chicken fried until brown, then added to a soup kettle with sliced okra and onions, covered with water, and simmered. And finally, there’s “Oyster Gumbo Soup,” which also starts with browned chicken simmered in water, but instead of okra, a quart of fresh oysters are added with their liquor and, at the very end, “one tablespoon of gumbo.” There is an outside chance that by “gumbo” Mrs. Fisher meant dried and powdered okra, which appears in a few scattered recipes in the 19th century, but it’s far more likely that she was talking about filé powder.
