But which came first, the févi or the filé? Some commentators have argued for filé and claim the word “gumbo” actually comes from kombo, the Choctaw term for powdered sassafras. But I’ve not been able to turn up a single example of a dish being called “kombo” in any 18th or 19th century source, while there are countless examples of a dish made from okra being called either “gombo” or “gumbo.” By the time Peyroux was writing his treatise on sassafras, Africans had been present in Louisiana for some 60 years, plenty long enough for their traditional okra-based stews to have entered the larger culinary culture of the colony.
The most probable path is that Louisianians were eating a thick stew they called “gombo” after its main ingredient, okra. Cooks found they could achieve a similar thickness using the filé powder made by the local Choctaw, and they started substituting that when okra wasn’t available.
