10/11/2022
WHAT IS BURGOO?
We get asked this often. Burgoo is a soup or stew that we believe originated in England. Some have said it is of German descent. The original recipe that most area Burgoos are based off of came from England by Isaac Watson. It is this recipe that our soup follows with the exception of wild game. It is made with beef, chicken, soup bones, ox tail, tomatoes, cabbage, corn, carrots, celery, onions, potatoes, as well as beans and pasta as thickeners. The seasonings are secret and highly guarded. The following is an article that appeared in the Jacksonville Journal Courier in 2003:
“Uncle Vince” Richardson was a sociable guy who loved to throw elaborate birthday parties for himself and host great gatherings of friends and neighbors.
And before his death in 1896, the venerated Morgan County farmer was a fixture at the annual soup dinners and festivals held in Richardson’s Grove, located in the Point neighborhood about 6 miles west of Jacksonville.
The yearly soup (actually burgoo) dinner in Richardson’s Grove was a popular event in Morgan County in the late 1800s.
A partial list of the soup’s ingredients was supplied by an observant Jacksonville Daily Journal reporter in 1889.
“Bright and early that prince of soup makers, J.Z. Scott, was on hand and soon nine kettles were steaming with savory contents. It is impossible to give a complete list of the ingredients used on such occasions. Something less than 100 soup bones, savory pieces of veal, 500 doves and squirrels, 50 chickens and other meats too numerous to mention, beside the whole line of vegetables known to this latitude.
”The attendees, who sometimes numbered more than 1,000, also usually dined on sandwiches, melons, chicken, ice cream and cake at the event in Richardson’s Grove.
But it was the soup, or burgoo, that drew the crowds. And while the Richardson’s Grove soup dinners ended long ago, several communities in west-central Illinois still hold burgoo-cooking festivals every summer.
Thirty-four summers ago, former Journal and Courier reporter Mary N. Fergurson looked into the burgoo culture in these parts. What follows are portions of her findings.
“Only in a few other isolated pockets of Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky (so they say) does burgoo culture survive,” she wrote. “But here it positively thrives. ‘Strangers may have to cultivate a taste for the stuff, but it’s almost sacrilegious for a native not to drool over it,’ reported Anne West in her Aug. 8, 1953, article published in the Saturday Evening Post.
“Scores of theories abound concerning the origin of what has been called ‘one of the truly great and unabashedly superb dishes of Americana’ and its migration to various segments of the lower Midwest and South.
“But most culinary scholars and local experts agree that this thick simmering concoction of meat, vegetables and spices was originally a hunter’s stew that traveled with the pioneers from the eastern seaboard, through the Appalachians to Kentucky and into the Northwest Territory.
“Though one soup maker hailing from a long line of burgoo cooks gives burgoo an older pedigree, saying it originated in England. Others contend that the soup first simmered in Germany while another cooking historian claims that burgoo was born in the ship’s mess during the 18th century.
“No matter, burgoo, which first utilized wild game — rabbits, squirrels, ducks and the like — has enjoyed a long domesticated history in Morgan, Scott and Cass counties. Local lore has it that Arenzville has put on a burgoo ever since the Civil War. And the Allan family of Scott County has been making soup for the past four generations. Their secret recipe, says Mark Allan, who has inherited the title of soup maker, is even older since a … man named Isaac Watson brought the recipe from England before giving it to his great-grandfather.”
Another story, which was published in the Jacksonville Daily Journal on Aug. 14, 1942, says that the first burgoo dinner in the area was held at Point church, officially known as Wesley Chapel United Methodist Church. The report says burgoo was made by farmers in that community for friends and families, who were most likely Richardsons and many of their neighbors. “The affair was soon taken up by the churches of the various communities and soon grew to be the most popular and profitable event held during the year,” according to the 1942 story.
The popularity of the thick soup known as burgoo, the recipe of which is often a closely guarded secret, continues in these parts today.
This Way We Were story was first published Aug. 11, 2003.
Written By
Greg Olson
