National Gumbo Day and Cookbook Launch Day in USA

By many accounts what makes gumbo different than, say, chicken and okra soup, is its use of roux (a mixture of browned flour in oil) as a flavor base and thickening agent. Green gumbo, however, enjoys the moniker without roux as a required ingredient.

Okra was introduced to the Southern U.S. from Africa, which accounts for the African component of gumbo. Okras thickened with filé and/or gumbo are considered to be Creole. The third type of thickener is roux. In French cooking, a roux is made from cooking fat and flour together to form a sort of gravy.

The most essential ingredient in any successful cookbook—besides the precise food styling and photography, and the clever editorial layout, and the imperative cover image and unique jacket treatments, and the marketing strategy and game-changing press mentions—is of course, the author.

The first recorded cookbook that is still in print today is Of Culinary Matters (originally, De Re Coquinaria), written by Apicius, in fourth century AD Rome.

In 1796, the first known American cookbook titled, American Cookery, written by Amelia Simmons, was published in Hartford, Connecticut. Until then, the cookbooks printed and used in the Thirteen Colonies were British. The first modern cookery writer and compiler of recipes for the home was Eliza Acton.