Real Cajun gumbo does not use okra. Okra is used to make shrimp gumbo, the best gumbo I ever had had one thing in common no okra. Chicken or duck just use whatever sausage you like. Andouille would be best, a good quality chicken sausage is great in chicken gumbo.
We used boudin occasionally in gumbo. Just something a little different - and the boudin would break up and almost dissolve into the gumbo. *But* - you bring up a point about okra that is as much about the recognition that all LA. cooking is not "Cajun". One can more correctly think of South LA
country cooking as "Cajun" - vs New orleans influence
city cooking as Creole.
Event the accents, and some specific words are different - as you know. The significant difference comes from the cultural heritage differences. New Orleans and the immediate area influenced by New Orleans had many Italians and Portuguese, and Africans who came as slaves. - and a few other groups that settled and added their cooking influence into the culinary - and social, language "patois" ( pah-TWAH ) that make up Southern LA today.
And - because slavery was not the provenance of the Cajuns who were the poorer country folk who mostly trapped, fished and farmed ( in that order of prevalence ) - the Africans who came to mostly the New Orleans influenced area of Southern LA are responsible for bringing Okra to the Americas, as it was an African food. There are stories of slaves smuggling seeds on their person that were planted in the Americas.
In the current era tho - recipes from families in the South part of LA have migrated to the Northern part - and visa versa. So, it is not so much a "dividing line" with okra as the determining factor - but the family history that we see when okra is used in many kinds of gumbo nowadays.
No rules...just what you grow up with - or what you happen to prefer.
But I do appreciate the histories and traditions of our foods. It helps us understand where we come from, and who our people were, what they had to eat, and often - how hard their lives may have been.
