SFA | Oral History | New Orleans Eats

“It’s—it can't be described, I don’t think. You know, you have to taste it. In other words, it has a distinct taste and flavor of its own…there’s nothing that I can think of that comes close to what filé tastes like.”

-Lionel Key

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Lionel Key says, “gumbo filé is a thickening and a seasoning that we use for our gumbos here in Louisiana.” In his thirties, Lionel learned the art of making filé—which involves curing and pulverizing the leaves of the sassafras tree—from his great-uncle, Joseph William Ricard. “Uncle Bill,” who was born blind passed on tradition said to have been established by the Choctaw Indians. And he handed down the tools that his own uncle made by hand in 1904.

While Lionel refuses to divulge family secrets, such as the harvest season for the leaves and how long he cures them, he takes his processing operation, his mortar and pestle, on the road to farmers’ markets and museums. Lionel is modest, but his vocation is rare enough that Slow Food included fresh hand-ground filé on its Ark of Taste. What’s more, Lionel recently convinced his eighty-two-year-old mother, previously in the camp of Louisiana cooks who prefer okra or roux thickeners, to try his filé. She’s a convert.

Listen to this 1-minute audio clip of Lionel Key describing how his Uncle Bill taught him to make filé. [Windows Media Player required. Go here to download the player for free.]

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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.

EDITED TRANSCRIPT

Subject: Lionel Key
Location: his home, Baton Rouge, LA
Date: July 14, 2006
Interviewer: Sara Roahen, writer and SFA member

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Sara Roahen: This is Sara Roahen; it’s July 14th, 2006 and I’m in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with Mr. Lionel Key. If I could get you to state your name and your birth date and how you make your living.

Lionel Key: My name is Lionel Key, Jr.; birthday is November 7th, 1948 and I make a living by making gumbo filé.

All right. Can you start out maybe by describing to me what that is — gumbo filé?

Gumbo filé is a thickening and a seasoning that we use for our gumbos here in Louisiana. It is made from sassafras leaves. I have—I employ mortar and [pestle] and I crush the leaves in to make it into powder—the old-fashioned way. Traditionally this was done by the Choctaw Indians. And they taught the settlers when they came over to this country how to make the gumbo filé.

And tell me how you got into that.

I had a great-uncle that made gumbo filé and he taught me how to make it. Joseph Willy Ricard was his name. He was blind. He made mops and brooms for the Lighthouse for the Blind and he made gumbo filé. He raised four kids doing that.

And so was he a big part of your life the whole time you were growing up?

Yes, he was. I always knew that Uncle Bill made gumbo filé and in his later years when he got older he called me one day to come over to help him to get his mop up off the floor. He couldn’t pick it up. In other words, he used to get a mop in a spool like when you have thread or something and he would take a broom handle and go through it and pick it up and put it on—on a roller where he could roll it off and cut it. And he got too weak to do it, so he called me up and that—that was the day that I decided that I was going to ask him how to make the gumbo filé before he passed on—on away from here.

And had that been brewing in your mind?

No; it hadn't, never—it just happened coincidentally that one day.

And did it dawn on you or did you talk in your family about how rare and sort of special it was?

No, Uncle Billy and I sat down and talked about it a lot. You know he told me to stay in the back of the garage and just do it and let family members and people who already bought from him buy from me, but I—I don’t know. I took it out—out of the garage and put it out in the forefront so people could actually see what was actually done.

And that day when you went over to help him pick up the mop what did you say to him?

I just asked him—I said Uncle Bill, would you teach me how to make the filé? He said yeah, my boy when I get ready to make it I’m going to call you up. So he called me one day about 5 o’clock in the morning and said he was getting ready to make filé and I told him, well Uncle Billy, I want to bring my two sons over there with me, so they can see too. And they hadn't gotten up yet, so I’ll be over there when they get up. So I gave—I had to give myself a little time. He had no sense of time because he lived in the dark all—you know being blind. He never knew what 5 o’clock was or 2 o’clock in the afternoon was, so he started out real early in the morning. When I got there he was still making it and the first thing he did was told me to sit there and pound the filé. So I went to pounding it and he say you’re not hitting it in the middle. I’m saying to myself how does this old man know I’m not hitting something in the middle, he can't even see? But it makes a distinct sound like a—a baseball hitting off the end of a bat or something like that. It makes a distinct sound when you hit it directly in the middle of the trunk of the—of the [pestle].

And so when you started working with your uncle, how long did that last? How long did it take you to get the hang of it?

Two years. Well he did—he did all the work. I was just around there watching and—and grasping what he was doing, you know. He was still doing it his-self, and when he passed away in ’85 I had to go on my own and I—I remember making the first jar I made by myself and it wasn’t—he wasn’t with me or his wife. His wife would help him also because she would be out there with him. And I made that first jar and I went over to her house and I said Aunt Sweet, I want you to see if I’m doing it right. So she took the jar and she opened it up; she smelled it and put her hands in it and did that to it, closed the top and gave it back to me and she said you got it.

And can you tell me a little bit about what his [Uncle Bill’s] personality was like?

How old were you then—I can't do the math in my head—when you started—?

I was in—I was in my 30s, maybe about 33—34—35, somewhere up in there.

And did you have a career doing something else at that point?

I was driving trucks for UPS.

Tell me about your year. I’m not sure how this works. There’s a harvest season I understand?

Yeah, once a year there’s a harvest.

And when is that?

Oh that’s a family secret. [Laughs] Uncle Bill told me don’t tell nobody unless I tell somebody in the family. But it’s once a year. Say for instance, I’m just going to use this as an example: January 15th to February 15th is when you can harvest. After that period of time you can't harvest anymore until next year.

And what do you harvest and how do you harvest it?

I go to the sassafras trees that I’m able to get a hold of and I—I use a pruner and I prune—I prune the limbs off of the tree, like you would be pruning a tree to help it to grow. And then I take the leaves on the branches—I don’t take them off; I wash them and then I take them and put them in the garage outside and let them dry for a period of time. And then once they’re dried good and dry I go and I hand-pick all the leaves off all the branches and that’s a lot of work—a lot of man hours involved in that. And then I cure them for a period of time before I start processing them.

Once they’re dried and cured, do you process them all at once? Do you make them into powder all at once or can you—

No. I can do it over a course of the year. Normally I have enough leaves to carry me through the years to do festivals all over the state of Louisiana and normally I—like right now I’ve still got two sacks of leaves left, and I have to get rid of them before I get my new harvest in.

Can you tell me where the trees are?

Well they’re all over. They’ve got trees here—right here in Baton Rouge I can get leaves from. I got a tree on a relative’s property in Sunshine, Louisiana but the storm got a hold of that and another one is sprouting up but it’s real short—real small right now. But I got my sources.

Well tell me what a sassafras tree looks like. I don’t think I know.

Well a sassafras tree is—looks something like an oak tree but it’s not as dark. They grow to be 80—90-feet tall.

When you were growing up what kinds of things did you eat with filé in it besides gumbo—anything?

No, but I know that you can use it for soups, sausage, gravies, stews—anything you want to thicken up.

Have you ever used it for anything else?

Yeah, red beans, potato soup, shrimp and corn soup.

With gumbo, is your style to put it in with your seasoning vegetables?

While you’re cooking it. And then after it’s dished up I’ll put some more on top of that—double dip.

Can you describe the flavor to me?

It’s—it’s—it can't be described I don’t think. You know, you have to taste it. In other words it has a distinct taste and flavor of its own so there’s nothing that I can think of that comes close to what filé tastes like.

So tell me what’s the difference between your products and a commercially packaged product?

You don’t know when they harvested the leaves. They didn’t harvest the leaves at the right time that’s going to be one thing. Secondly they use commercial grinders that grind everything up — the stems of the leaves, the vein of the leaves, and all that and it doesn’t—it’s not fresh. I don’t do it all at one time where I got it piled up. I keep a fresh supply at all times. Like right now I need to make up some more fresh filé. And it—the texture—is different; the smell is different. The thickness is different.

Has anyone in your family ever bought a commercial brand of filé?

They know they better not. My mother, she knew about filé all her life too but she never did like filé she said until a couple years ago, she got to taste some with some gumbo and she said oh that tastes pretty good. I want some of it, you going to give me a jar of filé. So I had to give her a jar of filé. And now I got a new person on the list.

And how old is she now?

My mother is 82.

I was wondering if you’ve ever talked to any Native Americans about this.

Not Choctaw. I’ve never met any Choctaw but I’ve met other Native Indians like the Houma Indians. They always like to buy it from me when they see me at festivals and they—they going to come and buy it.

I wanted to ask you about your tools. Where did you get those?

My great-uncle had those and when he made filé and when he passed away his wife, Aunt Sweet, gave them to me. She gave me all his cans, his mortar and [pestle]. She gave me everything that he had.

And do you know where he got it—the mortar and pestle?

His uncle made it for him, my great-great uncle made it in 1904 for him. It’s 102 years old. It’s made out of cypress—out of a sound piece of cypress lumber, a tree. That’s the treasure. I have people that come up to me and say oh that’s so beautiful. I’d love to have that. Oh man this thing is beautiful. I say the bidding starts at $4 million and goes up a million every second. I couldn’t depart with it, you know. I just couldn’t depart with it. I wouldn’t have nothing to work with and wouldn’t—how would I feel selling something like that? So I—I let people know it’s not for sale.

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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

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