SC - An Elderly Cookbook.- An Adventure in Recent History ;-)->"Southern Gumbo"

[Alderton, Philippa]

Southern Gumbo Soup

Cut up one chicken, and fry it to a light brown, also two slices of bacon ;
pour on them three quarts of boiling water ; add one onion and some sweet
herbs tied in a bag ; simmer them gently 3 hours and a half ; strain off the
liquor, take off the fat, and then cut the ham and chicken into small pieces
and put into the liquor ; add half a teacupful of rice.

Boil all half an hour, and just before serving add a dozen chopped oysters
with their juice.

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This doesn't look like any fairly recent gumbo recipe I've ever seen- no
okra or other herbal/ vegetable thickener for one thing. Could this simply
be an early version, or perhaps simply a Yankee version?

Am looking at this, and I think I'm starting to see why the word "lardum" in
Latin texts has always been translated as "bacon" - from the looks of this
recipe, bacon at the turn of the century was a word interchangeable with
ham, it seems, and many of the current Latin dictionaries were written
originally about that time. Perhaps I should consider translating the term
"lardum" as "preserved/ smoked pork meat" instead of merely "pork?"

Any thoughts?

Phlip

Nolo disputare, volo somniare et contendere, et iterum somniare.

phlip at morganco.net

Philippa Farrour
Caer Frig
Southeastern Ohio

"All things are poisons.  It is simply the dose that distinguishes between a
poison and a remedy." -Paracelsus

"Oats -- a grain which in England sustains the horses, and in
Scotland, the men." -- Johnson

"It was pleasant to me to find that 'oats,' the 'food of horses,' were
so much used as the food of the people in Johnson's own town." --
Boswell

"And where will you find such horses, and such men?" -- Anonymous