ISSUE 61, TENNESSEE FOODWAYS, Part 4: Cabbage Gumbo
Cabbage Gumbo
Tennessee boasts a number of distinctive soups: cream of chestnut, liver dumpling soup, pumpkin soup, and its own take on corn chowder, but the most interesting of its special pottages is a 19th century creation, Cabbage Gumbo. We can tell it was something devised after the Civil War because it employs a flour thickening. It is also interesting because it deviates from Louisiana style gumbo by using milk as the liquid that comprises the body of the soup. Hence the closest family relations are with the Georgia mulls, rather than gumbo. Corn chowder, which may use milk or buttermilk as its body, is the other obvious related soup.
The variety of cabbage to be used is not specified, but drumhead was the type most grown in eastern Tennessee for much of the 19th and early 20th century. The ham incorporated should be hickory smoked. Benton’s would be the choice nowadays. The flavor of the final product depends in large part to the degree of seasoning in the sausage employed in the mixture. Nutmeg, mace, allspice would be good. I am sure some cooks experimented with curry powder in their time.
This recipe comes from Rywell’s Tennessee Cookbook, published by Pioneer Press in 1951.