Jim Bradshaw: Gumbo debate: Potato salad or not?

When the first cold front pushes into South Louisiana in late fall, the thoughts of right-thinking people naturally turn to gumbo.
Everyone agrees, or should, that cool weather and gumbo go together like, well, gumbo and rice.
But not everyone agrees about what some people say is a tradition and others say is an abomination: gumbo and potato salad.
Should potato salad be allowed anywhere near a good gumbo?
If it is, should it go in the gumbo or be served as a side dish?
Those questions have inspired healthy arguments over many a kitchen table, and will likely never be resolved.
Some cooks say you should never put potato salad in a bowl of gumbo. Gumbo is served over rice, they argue.
Why do you want to add another starch like potatoes? Especially if it will change the taste of something already tasty.
But plenty of others say potato salad does indeed add another flavor, and makes the gumbo better.
As one food writer put it, “The creamy, tangy potato salad balances out the spicy, aromatic gumbo, creating a harmonious blend of flavors.”
Baton Rouge newspaper writer Jan Risher suggested in a recent article that “potato salad and gumbo are as connected as peanut butter and jelly,” but also suggests that there may be divided opinion about that. She quotes restaurateurs who serve potato salad with their gumbo, and who say that about half of the diners put it into the gumbo and half eat it as a side dish, or not at all.
Is it traditional? That depends on when and where you look. It could be that both rice and potato salad are indeed traditional — but not Cajun or Creole.
C. Paige Guitierrez says in her book about Cajun cooking, “Gumbo is served by ladling it over a dish of rice, or by placing a scoop of rice into a dish of gumbo” (“Cajun Foodways,” University Press of Mississippi, 1992). The book has several extended passages about gumbo, but nowhere does she mention potato salad — suggesting, at least to my mind, that the potato salad idea came from someone other than a Cajun.
University of Louisiana-Lafayette cultural historian Michael Martin suggested to Risher that south Louisiana’s German settlers may have been the first to put potato salad in their gumbo. I know potato salad was a traditional and favored food among my German ancestors.
My mother’s mother was a Fitzenreiter, and made the best potato salad I’ve ever eaten. And it is worth noting that the Germans who enjoyed a good potato salad were also among the pioneers in large-scale rice production in South Louisiana.
“I wonder if the idea of mixing the rice and potato salad together didn’t originate with those Germans,” Martin told Risher. “‘Why mix potato salad in with gumbo?’ is a curious question. First off, there hasn’t historically been a lot of potato production in south Louisiana, but it does work well as a soup thickener.”
That goes along with the observation by others that rice and/or potatoes help make the gumbo go farther, and to Guiterrez’s observation that “gumbo is an economical dish … [that] allows the cook … to feed a large number of people with a small amount of meat or seafood.”
She also observes that “the main dishes which are most frequently described as Cajun consist of a spicy, multi-ingredient component (meat or seafood plus seasoning vegetables), combined with a relatively bland and simple staple, usually rice.”
According to my unscientific observation, that staple is still usually rice. But enough people now think of potato salad as a necessary bland, simple filler that restaurants feel compelled to offer it at least as a side dish.
It may be lost altogether in this grand debate that the choice may boil down to the simple question of how good the potato salad is.
To my mind, a dollop of good potato salad could go into the bowl without any great harm or trepidation.
But I have to  ask: If the potato salad is really that good, why ruin it by soaking it in gumbo? And if it isn’t very good, why eat it all — in, out,  or alongside?
 You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.