Seafood Gumbo

By Alexandria Williams

     Almost at any restaurant you go to, u can find Gumbo on the menu. Mainly because it is a classic dish. After it was adopted in the United States, it has become a famous Southern dish, known for its spicy taste. Stereotypically speaking, all southern foods are spicy, because “all southerners enjoy spicy foods.” To be truthful I must say that not all southerners enjoy spicy foods, but Gumbo is better served spicy.

     Seafood Gumbo originated in the Southern region of the United States, in New Orleans, Louisiana. The word “Gumbo” itself derives from a West African word for okra. It is said that gumbo was originally made with okra.  The food became a cajun recipe, popular on the Acadian Coast. Another addition to the Seafood Gumbo was Tabasco sauce, which was for the people who really love spicy foods. Seafood Gumbo was sort of a combination of four cooking traditions, The French, the Spanish, the Indian, and the African.

The cooking traditions were changed, by adding spices to it. One thing that was original in the Americanized seafood gumbo, was the okra, which came from Africa. Being that Indian and Spanish foods were made spicy, the tradition of spices was incorporated into the new style for foods of the Southern states of America. Not to rude, but being Americans, we didn't really change the style of gumbo much, we basically just mixed the different combinatiions of food together. One thing we did change was added the different types of food to the style.

By taking the seafood gumbo, and adding different spices, we sort of formed the way the Southern States food was. Because of certain mixtures of different spices, we created the South. Also such combinations of foods help to define the Southern States and they also prove that many American foods, don't have just one origin, but many, and we have become what we are through the different techniques created by others.

Bibliography

1. http://www.southerngumbotrail.com/history.shtml

2. http://www.foodreference.com/html/artgumbo.html

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gumbo

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