Aug 8, 2023
When I got into cooking, I really wanted to learn the family gumbo recipe, which Grandma served once each summer. She was from Kansas, but her mom had grown up in New Orleans.
I went over to her house one June afternoon, excited to bond with Grandma and pass down a tradition. She’d bought a pile of shrimp, which I started studiously deveining.
Then she opened The Joy of Cooking and said “it says to make a roux, but that’s too much work, so I always skip it.”
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/secret-family-recipes-copied