Etymology uncertain. That is how the dictionary deals with the origins of the word gradoo, tip-toeing lightly around a word you wouldn’t want to step in. Pronounced graw-doo with the accent on doo, as in Scooby-Doo and Yabba Dabba Doo, a colloquialism from the South, the dictionary says. Ahh! No surprise there. It’s not Connecticut yankees throwing a word like that around if classier terms are available.

Which brings up the question of what, exactly, is gradoo. Back to the dictionary again: crud, filth, garbage, gunk; burnt mess stuck to the bottom of a pot. As for that last point, if you’re making gumbo, that stuff burnt to the bottom of the pot may end up being part of the roux. Which rhymes with gradoo. So maybe we’re getting somewhere. Gradieu? Blame it on the Cajuns!

I had never heard the term until I was a medical student in Mississippi taking a month long rotation in Pathology. A junior resident named Barbara was assigned to show me the basics of the adult autopsy. During organ removal, as one downsizes the important portions of the deceased into a manageable two large buckets, there is, as Barbara taught me, a need to tidy up as one goes along, an obligation to discard the not-so-important leftover bits of connective tissue and fat which she referred to as gradoo.

This was miles and miles below the Mason-Dixon Line, a region sometimes referred to as “the deep South.” In more refined parts of the world—including the deep north—spiffier words may be employed for discarded fatty, stringy anatomic leftovers. But here, there was no obligation to reach for a thesaurus.

I was left with this specific image, this connotation, of the term which stuck in my memory for over a decade as I entered my own career as a pathologist with the occasional task of separating out the gradoo from the non-gradoo.

And then, one day my father-in-law surprised me when he used the term to refer to his high-fiber breakfast concoction of oatmeal, wheat germ, wheat berries, barley, and a few other items. He would leave a medium-sized pot of “gradoo” simmering in a double boiler on the stove, the thick tan and gray mass spewing steam as it slowly solidified. Then he would spoon some into a bowl, douse it with some butter and milk, and chow down.

I tried it once. It was not bad, certainly tastier than plain cooked oatmeal. With a full texture and some definite chewiness, it was not without some measure of umami. But I refused to think of it as gradoo. I referred to it as Poppie’s hot cereal. When Poppie briefly thought it might be marketable, a sure-fire moneymaker, the greatest thing to hit the world of slow-cook, difficult-to-assemble breakfast since the tater tot casserole, I told him to go for it. But please, call it something besides gradoo.

My father-in-law grew up in Washington state, so was not a native Southerner. He was a transplant who pronounced his words clearly. He enunciated distinctly like a television journalist. He preferred gradoo to grits. He was ambivalent about fried chicken, biscuits, and Elvis.

He learned the term gradoo from Bob, a friend of his, a man who was dyed-in-the-cotton Southern. Inescapably Southern. So Southern he could have been nicknamed Bubba and no one would have thought anything of it. Bob told tales of his scouting days where, on camp outs, his troop would have a large pot over the fire containing some sort of hearty stew that no one would care about eating in their own home, but might, for the sake of nutrition, swallow a few bites out in the woods. They called this stew gradoo.

Bob related that as the stew cooked over the campfire, each boy would, in turn, run and jump over the pot, some with more skill than others. Also, some with more crud and filth stuck to the bottoms of their sneakers. Then, when all the boys had jumped over, it was dinner time and the gradoo was served. No one usually asked for seconds, said Bob, so maybe the ritual served to stretch a thin food budget in addition to adding exotic flavors.

As you may have guessed, Poppie never got the patent on his hearty cereal, never reaping the millions of dollars in revenue it was sure to provide in his retirement. The recipe died with him, although one could probably get close enough with only the list of ingredients described above. There it might have sat—next to the Cream of Wheat and the Quaker Oats: Graddoo Hot Cereal takes a while to make but worth the effort. Add one cup water and one teaspoon of salt. Cook on low heat for an hour, stirring occasionally.

Whether scouts still jump over their supper, I do not know.

Richard D. Key was born in Jacksonville, Fla., but now lives in Alabama where he works part-time as a pathologist. His writing has appeared in Adelaide Literary Magazine, American Writers Review, Bacopa Literary Review, The Broken Plate, Carbon Culture Review, Crack The Spine, Edify Fiction, Evening Street Review, Forge, Hawaii Pacific Review, HCE Review, The Penmen Review, Storgy, Streetlight Magazine, THEMA, and Tusculum Review. Find more of his work on his website: richardkeyauthor.com.