Abby Fisher’s Oyster Gumbo Soup – What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking, 1881 – Black Foodie Finder

A Chicken and Oyster Gumbo From One of the First Cookbooks by a Black American Woman

This gumbo starts the old way, with a browned hen simmered down to a rich broth, and finishes with a quart of fresh oysters and their liquor dropped in at the last minute. A spoonful of “gumbo” thickens it. That is what Mrs. Fisher called filé, the ground sassafras leaf that Gulf Coast cooks still stir in right before the pot leaves the stove.

Abby Fisher could not read or write. She dictated her 1881 cookbook to friends in San Francisco after her pickles and preserves won medals at the state fair, and the book became one of the earliest known cookbooks by a Black American woman. Her recipes are short, confident and written for a cook who already knows a kitchen. We have kept her words in the clipping above and broken the method into steps below.

Ingredients

• 1 stewing hen or large chicken, about 4 pounds, cut into small pieces
• Salt and black pepper
• All-purpose flour, for dredging
• Fat for frying (lard, bacon drippings or oil)
• ½ small onion, chopped very fine
• 2 quarts water
• 1 quart fresh shucked oysters, with all their liquor
• 1 tablespoon filé powder (Mrs. Fisher’s “gumbo”)
• Fresh parsley, chopped very fine
• Dry boiled white rice, for serving

Makes: about 6 servings (our estimate; the book gives no yield)

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Cut the chicken into small pieces and season with salt and black pepper.
2. Dip the pieces well in flour and fry them over a slow fire until brown. Do not let them burn.
3. While the chicken fries, sprinkle the finely cut onion over it.
4. Move the chicken to a soup pot, add two quarts of water, and let it boil down to three pints (about six cups).
5. Just before serving, add the oysters with all their liquor and let the pot come to a boil a second time.
6. Stir one tablespoon of filé into the soup quickly, then take it off the heat.
7. Put the chopped parsley in the tureen and dish the gumbo over it.
8. Serve with dry boiled rice in a separate dish, one tablespoon of rice to each plate of gumbo.

Pro Tips & Suggestions

• “Gumbo” means filé. In 1881 the word could mean the dish or the thickener. Mrs. Fisher means powdered sassafras leaf. Stir it in off the heat and never boil it afterward, or it turns stringy.
• An old chicken is the point. A stewing hen gives the broth its body. If you use a young supermarket chicken, shorten the simmer so the meat does not fall apart before the broth reduces.
• Save every drop of oyster liquor. The liquor is half the flavor. Buy oysters in their own juice, or shuck them over a bowl.
• Two quarts down to three pints. That reduction takes about an hour at a steady simmer with the lid off. Skim as it goes.
• Rice on the side, not in the pot. She serves the rice separately so it stays dry. A spoonful in each bowl is her measure; nobody will stop you from adding more.

About the Creator

Abby Fisher was born into slavery in South Carolina around 1831. By the late 1870s she was living in San Francisco with her husband Alexander, running a pickle and preserve business and cooking for some of the city’s leading families. Her pickles, sauces, jellies and preserves took two medals at the San Francisco Mechanics’ Institute Fair in 1880 and a diploma at the Sacramento State Fair in 1879, as the title page of her book proudly notes.

What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking was printed in San Francisco in 1881 by the Women’s Co-operative Printing Office. In her preface she explains that she could neither read nor write and that friends took the book down as she spoke it. The 160 recipes cover soups, meats, pickles, preserves, breads and desserts from a life spent cooking in the South and then the West.

Where to Find This Recipe

This recipe is retyped from page 22 of What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking, Soups, Pickles, Preserves, Etc. by Mrs. Abby Fisher (San Francisco, 1881). The book is in the public domain and can be read in full at the Internet Archive.

No photograph of Mrs. Fisher is known to exist, so the clipping above is the only picture on this page. We show every historical image exactly as it appears in the source.