The Southern Gumbo Trail | Oral Histories

Listen to this two–minute audio clip of Annou Olivier instructing her nephew, David, on how to make a roux according to the method by which her family’s cook, Ga, used to make it. [Windows Media Player required. Go here to download the player for free.]

Listen to this two–minute audio clip of David Olivier, who grew up in Virginia, describing what dinners were like in his grandparents’ New Orleans home when he would visit them as a child.

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NOTE: What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

Subjects: Annou and David Olivier
Date: July 23, 2007
Location: General Pershing Street—New Orleans, LA
Interviewer: Sara Roahen
Photographer: Sara Roahen

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Sara Roahen: This is Sara Roahen for the Southern Foodways Alliance. It’s Monday, July 23, 2007, and I’m in New Orleans, Louisiana at the Olivier household. Could I have you both say your full name and your birth date please?

Ann [Annou] Olivier: I’m Ann O’livier [French pronunciation], or Ann Olivier; born in New Orleans. My birth date is August 31, 1930.

David Olivier: My name is David Victor Olivier, or O’livier [French pronunciation] in old parlance, and my birthday is March 10, 1972.

Okay, thank you. And now I’m going to ask Annou [Ann goes by the nickname Annou] a question. And because of some problems with her hearing we’re going to be typing some of the questions for her [on a laptop computer]. So if there’s a pause, that’s why. And I’m going to ask her about being a New Orleans Creole, and ask her what that means to her family and what that means her heritage is, exactly.

AO: Well we say we’re Creole because our ancestors were colonial people—that is, they settled here before Louisiana was acquired by the United States. We most—they were mostly French and a little bit Spanish. When the Spaniards took over briefly some of them stayed, and some of them are our ancestors.

David is going to be typing the questions for me. so would you ask Annou how far back she’s aware of her heritage: what generation of her family came from Europe?

AO: Well the first that came to America was a Canadian, one of the coureur de bois: one of the young men, Frenchmen, who came over and ran around in the woods. That was in the early 17th century. Then the first Olivier who came over, came over sometime in the early 18th century, went to Canada and married a Canadian woman. That’s where our Canadian connection comes in, and they moved to Louisiana. I think he got here in 1732, which wasn’t all that much past when it was first settled. Now on my mother’s side—the Cherbonniers—that was her name, that’s—well her ancestor, he came over after Napoleon’s defeat. He was not colonial; he was actually an immigrant because that was after Louisiana had been sold to the Americans. He came over after Waterloo. He had been one of Napoleon’s personal bodyguards. He was crazy, is the fact of the matter; he was so Rah-rah, Napoleon! I mean Napoleon’s charisma must have been really extraordinary. This Cherbonnier ancestor was one of the ones who arranged to buy the Napoleon House in New Orleans, so Napoleon could move here. When this Cherbonnier ancestor died [Laughs], it was his will that he be buried in full uniform complete with this musket standing up in his tomb, so that when Napoleon sounded the call to battle again he would be ready. He’s my favorite ancestor. [Laughs] He was actually—he was actually an educator; he was a school teacher of all things. He was also a ventriloquist, but we won't go into that.

Can anyone besides French and Spanish and Africans be Creole? You’ve talked about Greek Creoles.

AO: Yes. Creole really comes from the Spanish word meaning colonial peoples. And it was adopted in New Orleans for people who were colonial peoples, and who derived from the colonial stock. Some of those people were neither French nor Spanish, and I have some Creole friends, inter-married actually—they have relatives, the Omeichens, who were Greek. There were also the deBaroncellis, who were the—who were Italian. And the Socolas were Italian Creoles. I mean, Dr. Socola, the name is Italian—and that ancestor on that side of his family was Italian, but Dr. Socola was as Creole as they come. Too, the Generellis were also Italian Creoles.

She’s told me before that she knows some African Americans or blacks who share your last name, and she—I think she thought maybe there might be some relation.

AO: Oh, we have loads of black cousins. And as everybody knows the—the Creole men often had African mistresses, and with that we’re cousins. We just—we’re cousins, and in many ways we’re similar. I tend to think of the black Creoles, they are those families—well the whole system I think was sort of a limited sort of polygamy. The Creole men had two families: one white and one mixed. And they took care of their mixed children and their mistress. They couldn’t marry them, of course, but they took care of them and they—they owned them. Well no, they didn’t own them; it was considered improper to own their children, so they were free. That led to the large free people of color in New Orleans and South Louisiana. And of course they’re our cousins. Now the women didn’t know each other, I mean socially. There was no intercourse there, because of course I don’t think women generally liked to think that their husbands or their—their lovers have somebody else. But that was the system.

DO: How many generations ago?

AO: Well certainly not after the Civil War, I would imagine, because they couldn’t afford two families. Before the Civil War they—they could afford more than one family. The white Creoles tend to be well-to-do, even rich. I mean some of them were very rich, like the de Marignys, who are our cousins. I mean he was extremely rich; he was one of the richest people in the United States at the time. Well at any rate, after the Civil War I don’t—I think the system simply died because there was no money. You couldn’t afford two families.

I’m asking her now in what part of town she grew up.

AO: Well in those days, I was thinking, you didn’t talk so much about which neighborhood you were from; you talked about which parish you were from. The city was much, much more Catholic than it is now. And so you know, you’d say, I live in Saint Ann’s Parish, or whatever. And we lived down—well there was an uptown and a downtown; there was Metairie; there was across the river; there was Jefferson; past Metairie—but it didn’t even have a name. But we would really more talk about which parish we were from, except we were from downtown. We were—we lived half a block from Esplanade on Claiborne. And that was our neighborhood. It was a very, very mixed neighborhood.

And when you would visit as a kid, is that where they lived?

DO: No, by the time I was—when my father was a teenager, which would have been I guess the late ‘50s, they moved further up. There was—that neighborhood had really declined, and shortly before—I guess a couple years before I-10 was built through there, they wound up moving further up Esplanade, closer to Bayou St. John, and that’s where I would visit as a kid.

I understand that your family had a cook, and also that your parents were food enthusiasts and liked to cook themselves. Tell me about family meals in the house where you were growing up.

AO: Yes, we had a cook. My father was not a food enthusiast, however. He—his mother wasn’t Creole. [Laughs] But that’s not—I shouldn’t have said that. His mother was the child of an immigrant German who went into the food business, as a matter of fact. They had a maid too, and they had a cook too, so they ate well too, but she never had to cook either. So she didn’t like to cook; she didn’t know how to cook. The only thing she knew how to cook was some German doughnuts, which we used to have on Mardis Gras, which were delicious. And so my father was not a food enthusiast. His father just wanted to eat meat and potatoes, as my mother said, and that’s—and she said that’s what killed him. She said there was no variety in his diet, and that’s why he died in his 50s. [Laughs] The Creoles generally ate a wide variety of foods, and I am sure that’s one of the reasons why many Creoles live forever. Their diet was quite good.

Can you ask the name of her family’s cook, and whether she was Creole?

AO: The cook was Elnora Ward, who married Willy Gaines, so she was Elnora Ward Gaines. She was from Leonville, Louisiana. She was—she did not consider herself a Creole. She was African American and Indian; she was a quarter Indian. Her grandfather was named Charles Lamb. And they—she moved to New Orleans when I think she was 18 or 19, went to work for my grandmother. And then my grandfather died and my parents married and lived with my grandmother in their big house. So Elnora Gaines was the cook’s name. Then my young—my older brother could not say Elnora, so he called her Gaga. And that was her nickname—sometimes called Ga. And she was Ga to everybody. And she was a friend to man. And she was just about the best person I’ve ever known. She was extremely [emphasis added] holy. She used to have a key to Peter Claiborne Church. She would take her key and go to—before 6:30 mass, she would go at 6 o’clock, open the church, and turn on the heat so it would be comfortable for everybody. And the priests, they trusted her that much; they gave her a key. She—she had no children, and she just loved all children and she loved everybody. As I say, she was the best person I’ve ever known

DO: Describe her cooking style.

AO: She cooked the way my mother told her to cook. My mother cooked the way her mother told her to cook. My mother didn’t cook when we were young. She would call her mother and ask her, How do you cook this? My grandmother would tell my mother, and my mother would tell Ga, and Ga would cook it. My grandmother had been taught to cook by her mother’s cook, Aunt Choob, who as another African American.

DO: Tell the story about the fire in the backyard.

AO: Oh yes, the fire in the backyard. When Ga came to New Orleans the only thing she knew how to cook was what she called coush-coush, which I’m sure is the same thing as the couscous of the Africans. So she arrived at 4 o’clock in the morning, found some wood somewhere, set a fire and started to cook coush-coush for breakfast [Laughs] in the yard.

But she didn’t have to cook over a fire?

AO: Oh sure there was a kitchen, but she didn’t know how to use a kitchen stove. She was very young, and I think her mother must have been still alive then. Yeah, the kitchen was in the dépendence. It was one of those old houses you know—.

My two favorites were fried chicken—Ga’s fried chicken, which was as good as Popeye’s—and her stuffed fish: red fish or trout or any nice big fish, and she stuffed it with the old New Orleans French bread, which they do not make anymore. Don’t let anybody tell you they do. And she would just put, well onions and green peppers, green onions—two kinds of onions. She typically cooked with two kinds of onions, and not just one—two kinds of onions, mushrooms, shrimp if there was some around, and she made a stuffing that was out of this world. And on the top she would slice tomatoes and lemons and put those across the top. Actually that was Italian. My mother got that recipe from the local butcher, Mr. Oddo, and she told Ga how to do it and Ga just knew how to cook. I mean she knew what to do. It was so good. [Emphasis Added]

I want to ask Annou now about the kind of gumbo that Ga made.

AO: She made both the okra and the filé, but she would not put both in one—in the same gumbo. We had either okra gumbo or filé gumbo. And I think the difference—now, most gumbos are good, except nowadays they put too much pepper in them. But I think the difference between the old-fashioned and the new-fashioned was there was more okra. And I think the reason there was more okra was because there was time to cook the okra. It took a long time to move that okra around and get enough of the fluid out of it, so it wasn’t sticky. And she had time because, I mean in those days the maids and the cook—not only the maid—they didn’t work all day. They cooked for dinner; they cleaned house in the morning; they did what was needed doing, but they had time to cook. And so she would take her time and she would cook. So it wouldn’t burn on the bottom, and she’d take her good time and cook the okra, and it was really delicious.

Can you ask her what else would go in the okra gumbo, and what would go in the filé gumbo?

AO: Well in the okra gumbo you could either make a Friday gumbo, which had only seafood, or you could make a gumbo that you’re not going to serve on a Friday, and you could put some, oh, chicken with the seafood, or some sausage. So it—there was more a variety if you were going to have it some other time during the week. Then the filé gumbo, well we mainly had filé gumbo when there was turkey left; you would use the carcass of a turkey. I mean we always had filé gumbo after Christmas or Thanksgiving.

Would there be a roux in those two gumbos?

AO: Both of them had a roux definitely, but we didn’t use a very dark roux the way the Cajuns do. Many Cajuns use a very dark roux. In fact we never used a very dark roux for anything.

Would she put tomatoes in it?

AO: A little bit. Ga would put—for gumbo for six people or eight people—‘cause when she cooked it for us she’d cook it for herself and her husband and her sister, maybe—she would put several tablespoons of tomato paste. It was more like a seasoning than an ingredient. She fried that [tomato paste] too. She would fry that with the roux.

In gumbo, she would put black pepper, thyme. I guess that was about it—wouldn’t put cloves in gumbo the way some people do. Cloves, cloves you should use very rarely. They overpower everything. But for some things she did use it. I think maybe they put a little cloves in crawfish bisque, maybe.

Can you ask if gumbo was an everyday dish, or was it a special occasion?

AO: No, we’d often have it on Fridays—very often have it on Friday. It wasn’t a special occasion dish. I mean we never had it on special occasions. It was an ordinary dish.

Okay, so David: so you grew up mostly in Virginia?

DO: A bunch of places but mostly Virginia—more Virginia than anywhere else, yeah.

Did your dad cook New Orleans food in Virginia, or did your mom learn?

DO: I’m trying to think of—my mom did more of the day-in and day-out cooking, and she actually—so she, for example, she cooked a gumbo. Like the gumbo that I had the most as a kid was her version of the gumbo, you know. And she, you know being Virginian, hadn’t grown up cooking or eating gumbo. But she as an adult had—and I have no idea how she came on to her version of it. I don’t know if it was through recipes or through talking to someone. But she cooked like, a sort of a brothier kind of—I think it was chicken and oyster maybe. There was definitely oysters—. And then I think it was maybe chicken, and it was a sort of thinner, brothy, you know much brothier than the sort of thick sort of roux-intensive kinds of things down here. So it’s, you know, a lighter thing.

And so what did you think of the food in New Orleans when you would visit as a kid?

DO: We’d usually have Popeye’s the night we flew in. Like we would come to the New Orleans airport, and that was always a very distinctive impression, you know like walking off of—coming out of that airport in December or something. You know it’s swelteringly humid compared to Virginia, but then usually Popeye’s was the sort of typical routine for the night we would get there. But then I mean in general the—the really sort of memorable impression was just that it was just a style of eating that is very rare now. I mean even beyond just actual specific contents of the food, the whole mode of eating was very different. First of all they ate really early—they ate like, you know 5-something every night. You know, so—. And it was—the table was always, like it was always this elaborate—it wasn’t super, super formal, but it was just very much more elaborate than anything that we normally did. The table was always set, you know, and there was always the ritual of setting the table, maybe putting in an extra eve. And then, you know the multiple courses that—always a soup course, there was always a salad, there was always bread on the table, there was always pitchers of water on the table. And the, like the soup might be just Campbell’s. I mean it wasn’t—so the specific things weren’t always fancy in and of themselves, but it was, you know the—it was always a multi-course event with—you know, and always some dessert. So it was a strong impression compared to, you know the usual one-course sit-down American dinner.

And so did you grow up identifying as a Creole?

DO: I was definitely something of an outsider to that culture. On the one hand I sort of had a lot of exposure to it, but it wasn’t like—. I’d come down here to my cousins’ and they’d all—you know they all went to mass every Sunday; totally involved in—you know went to Catholic school, and just did all these things that were definitely very different from my life. So it was definitely, you know, some sense of an outsider. But it’s, for whatever reason, kind of the way it’s played out. I mean, yeah obviously, I wound up moving here. I identify more, I guess more strongly with my New Orleans, you know, lineage than anything else even though it’s not—even though I didn’t grow up immersed in it.

Well what about gumbo, for example? I lived in New Orleans for almost seven years—or anyway, around there. I learned how to make gumbo, but when I make gumbo I’m—I’m not digging deep into some taste memory. I know you make gumbo. Are you, or does it feel like a very recent acquisition?

DO: Well it’s—I think that the gumbo sort of reflects the broader thing. It’s a sort of dual answer, is that I didn’t grow up, you know, at some apron strings. You know as a man I wouldn’t have—even if I had grown up here, I probably wouldn’t have been the one getting the instruction in the kitchen anyway. But I mean I can't claim that like when I cook gumbo today it’s because I watched—I have memorized, you know, [Laughs] what Gaga was doing over the stove or anything like that, because I don’t have that kind of detail. You know I was a kid, when I was—so I mean when I cook gumbo now I look at recipes. But—but at the same time I’m referencing also—although the specific technical information of how to make a gumbo I had to, you know, reassemble as an adult from recipes and whatnot. But what I have is a sort of very specific idea of what they should, you know, be like. So I’ll sort of, you know, look at several recipes and be like No, I don’t like that. Yeah, that’s correct and that’s wrong. You know, and sort of edit them to reflect what I think the end result should be. I mean—it wasn’t the sort of detailed direct transfer of you know, culinary knowledge, but I mean —you know people have since I was a small child told me about making rouxs. [Laughs] I mean Annou would lecture me about how to make a roux, and you know Petey [David’s grandfather] would lecture me about how to make—you know—. My father would lecture me about how to make a roux. It’s, you know, this thing that people like to I guess lecture small children about. [Laughs] You know, so I have always known that you stir it constantly. [Laughs] So then I—so there’s definitely referencing strong memories if not, you know, like detailed technical knowledge of how to make it.

Do you lecture your daughters on how to make a roux?

DO: Not yet, but I’m sure I will.

Ask her [Annou] what she would say if she were to lecture to someone on how to make a roux.

AO: I would say, Now David, this is very tricky. You must take great care. You take half oil of some sort. If this were 1930 I’d tell you to use lard but that’s out of the question these days. I don’t think they even make lard anymore. But you would use one-part oil to one-part flour. And you would heat the oil and get it good and hot, but not terribly hot, add the thing and then stand there—again, stand and move it around, with probably a flap jack flipper. And you just moved it around so it wouldn’t burn until it got to be the color you wanted. When Ga made it, she was really good: she would make it for the week. And that meant it was going to be about at least a half-inch thick in a large frying pan. And she didn’t burn it. I mean she knew what she was doing. And it would—it would plop! It was the right—it was the right temperature when it sort of plopped merrily like that.

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