Cajun/Creole · soup

Gumbo z'Herbes (Holy Thursday Green Gumbo)

Gumbo z'Herbes (Holy Thursday Green Gumbo) reads umami 6.5, richness 5.3 and salinity 4.8 on Palate's 0–10 flavor X-ray — a Cajun/Creole soup, about 2 hr 15 min. Measured from the recipe itself: ingredients and technique.

The flavor X-ray — six axes, 0–10

The measured notes (of 18)

Umami 6.5 · Richness 5.3 · Salinity 4.8 · Allium 4.5 · Heat 3.1 · Sweetness 2.1 · Warm Spice 1.8 · Herbaceous 1.6 · Earthy 1.5 · Bitterness 1.4 · Smoke 1.1 · Sourness 0.7 · Floral 0.7

What's in it (18)

Time & effort: about 2 hr 15 min · effort: involved

Nutrition (per 100 g, engine-estimated): 64.7 kcal, 3.1 g protein, 2.9 g fat, 6.7 g carbs

Dietary: Contains meat — engine-derived; double-check anything allergy-critical.

How it's cooked (10 steps)

  1. Leah Chase cooked this at Dooky Chase in New Orleans every Holy Thursday for over half a century and the queue went round the block. The tradition is a Creole Catholic Lenten one, and the superstition attached to it is that you make new friends in the coming year for each green in the pot, so the number is always odd — seven, nine, eleven. Chase used nine and often more. Green gumbo is also older than the tradition attached to it: a leaf-thickened pot of greens is a West African and Afro-Creole form, and it exists in Louisiana on days that are not Lent.
  2. The greens are the point and the variety is the point. Use as many different kinds as you can find, including bitter ones — mustard, collard, turnip, beet tops, carrot tops, watercress, spinach, cabbage, and if you can get them, radish tops, kale and pepper grass. A pot made only of spinach and kale is flat.
  3. And say plainly that this pot is not vegetarian, despite being a Lenten dish; the meat was permitted on Holy Thursday and Chase's version is full of it.
  4. Wash the greens in several changes of water, pack them into a very large pot with the 3 litres of water, cover, and boil 30 minutes, until everything has collapsed and is completely tender. Drain them, KEEPING every drop of the cooking liquid — that dark green liquor is the stock and the soul of the pot.
  5. Chop the cooked greens very fine, or pulse them briefly in a processor. They should be shredded, not pureed.
  6. Brown all four meats — the smoked sausage, chaurice, ham and brisket — in a large heavy pot over medium-high heat, 15 minutes, until they take colour and their fat runs. Lift them out.
  7. Make the roux: pour off all but 120 ml of the fat, add the oil, whisk in the flour and cook over medium heat, stirring without stopping, 20 minutes, until it is the colour of milk chocolate and smells like toasted nuts. If it smells burnt or black flecks appear, throw it out and start again — a broken roux ruins the pot and it is faster to redo than to fix.
  8. Add the onions and garlic to the roux and cook 8 minutes until soft. Return the meats, add the chopped greens and all their reserved liquor, and simmer uncovered 40 minutes.
  9. Season with the thyme, bay, salt and cayenne. Take the pot off the heat, stir in the file powder — dried ground sassafras leaf, a Choctaw ingredient and the oldest thickener in Louisiana cooking — and let it stand 5 minutes. File must never boil; it turns stringy and ropy. Serve over rice.
  10. Substitutions: fresh spicy pork sausage can stand in for the hot chaurice; stewing beef can stand in for the beef brisket.

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Every number above is Palate's engine-measured estimate, computed from this recipe's ingredients and techniques — not human-tasted ratings or reviews.