Gushing over gumbo and celebrating celery: two literary quotes.

[full_metal_ox]

I encountered these quotes in Vegetarian Soups for All Seasons (Little, Brown and Company, 1996), by Nava Atlas; the problem is that I haven’t the book ready to hand, and it’s no longer in any of my local library systems.

The first quote came from a nineteenth-century (French? British? I want to say De Tocqueville or Brillat-Savarin) author who’d visited the U.S. and found an epiphany in gumbo: they proceeded to eulogize it as the perfect food, combining vibrant flavors and being soup and vegetable and entree in one.

The second was by a Victorian or Edwardian British author, extolling celery, in its cold clear no-nonsense crispness, as the gustatory expression of autumn. (These quotes embellished recipes for a gumbo and a celery soup, respectively; Atlas’ cookbook had something of a literary and reflective tone.)

ETA: wolfinthewood has identified the celery quote, from the essay “A Word for Autumn” in Not that it matters (1919) by A.A. Milne; kineticatrue has tracked the gumbo quote to Will H. Coleman’s Historical Sketch Book and Guide to New Orleans and Environs (1885), p 91.

Comments

[rosefyre]

Have you considered asking your local library if they can do an interlibrary loan to get you the book? Most libraries offer some form of interlibrary loan -- there may be a small fee, but in my experience they're often free. It exists in various libraries on WorldCat: https://www.worldcat.org/title/vegetarian-soups-for-all-seasons-a-treasury-of-bountiful-low-fat-soups-and-stews/oclc/33665910 -- if you give your local library that link they can probably order it for you.

Alternately, you can buy the book used for about $5 on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2LiAO9F (it says 40 cents but, you know, shipping).

[full_metal_ox]

I’ll bear that in mind, and thank you.

[wolfinthewood]

It sounds as though the second quotation is taken from this passage by A.A. Milne, in Not that it matters (1919):

Last night the waiter put the celery on with the cheese, and I
knew that summer was indeed dead. Other signs of autumn there may
be--the reddening leaf, the chill in the early-morning air, the
misty evenings--but none of these comes home to me so truly.
There may be cool mornings in July; in a year of drought the
leaves may change before their time; it is only with the first
celery that summer is over.

I knew all along that it would not last. Even in April I was
saying that winter would soon be here. Yet somehow it had begun
to seem possible lately that a miracle might happen, that summer
might drift on and on through the months--a final upheaval to
crown a wonderful year. The celery settled that. Last night with
the celery autumn came into its own.

There is a crispness about celery that is of the essence of
October. It is as fresh and clean as a rainy day after a spell of
heat. It crackles pleasantly in the mouth. Moreover it is
excellent, I am told, for the complexion. One is always hearing
of things which are good for the complexion, but there is no
doubt that celery stands high on the list. After the burns and
freckles of summer one is in need of something. How good that
celery should be there at one's elbow.

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5803/pg5803.html

https://archive.org/details/notthatitmatters0000miln/page/60/mode/2up

[full_metal_ox]

Yes—that’s the celery quote! Thank you so much—including going to the trouble of linking the source essay!

[kattslavenkoko.wordpress.com]

That's lovely!

[full_metal_ox]

Which brings to mind a far more familiar A.A. Milne quote: “What could be more important than a little something to eat?”

[kinetikatrue]

And this is the gumbo quote:

Coleman, Will Historical Sketch Book and Guide to New Orleans and Environs (1885), p 91

“The great dish of New Orleans, and which it claims the honor of having invented, is the GOMBO. There is no dish which at the same time so tickles the palate, satisfies the appetite, furnishes the body nutriment sufficient to carry on the physical requirements, and costs so little as a creole gumbo. It is a dinner in itself, being soup, piece de resistance, entremet, and vegetables in one. Healthy, not heating to the stomach and easy of digestion, it should grace every table.”

at archive.org

[full_metal_ox]

Thank you for tracking down the gumbo reference! Between winter (January is National Soup Month in the U.S.) and quarantine, I’ve been making oceans of soup, which may have spurred the memory of those two passages.

[calzephyr]

That's awesome that you were able to find answers!

[full_metal_ox]

Yeah; I’ve vastly enjoyed being a book querent and book detective on this comm and its Livejournal predecessor (which has, unfortunately, been deleted; I can’t have been the only one using it as an off-script book rec and reference source, and I wish they’d at least left the old posts intact as originally planned.)

[calzephyr]

It's such a shame that whatwasthatbook was deleted as you never know what tiny clue Google will zero in on :\

[kattslavenkoko.wordpress.com]

It was moved over to Dreamwidth entirely, so still possible to find the posts :-) It's very quiet, though: https://whatwasthatbook.dreamwidth.org/

[full_metal_ox]

Unfortunately, it’s not a matter of the Livejournal content having been ported into Dreamwidth; the Dreamwidth version of whatwasthatbook was created back in 2009 as a backup Just In Case; the first query dates from 2011, and the second and third from right after Perevorot ‘17 (the latter two were mine, in part as an attempt to jump-start the comm.) In short: the Dreamwidth comm contains only its own handful of posts and comments, and over a decade of LJ correspondence is gone.

[kattslavenkoko.wordpress.com]

Oh, I see. Well, that's a pity then.