You don't just make a gumbo, you build one

Now you can get everything you want, but back them a gumbo meant something - it told you what time it was.

You don't just make a gumbo, you build one. I don't just throw everything in the pot at once after the roux - it's the stock I make and the order I put the crab or shrimp or chicken in. You know a good gumbo because it has layers. You can taste each level the chef has put into it. The rice is important too; each grain has to be separate.

Chef Henderson in Mobile, quoted in M.W. Twitty, The cooking gene (2017), 196