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Louisiana Gumbo

A hearty soup of chicken, ham, okra, tomatoes, onions, and spices served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Okra and tomato work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 327 recipes. Both carry damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Louisiana Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil the chicken in 3 quarts of water until the meat is tender and the water reduces to 2 quarts.

  2. Remove the chicken, mince half of it finely, and return it to the pot, keeping it simmering.

  3. Fry the ham or pork until the grease is extracted, then remove the meat.

Build the gumbo

  1. Add the minced onion to the pan and stir until it turns a delicate brown.

  2. Sift flour over the okra, add it to the pan with the onion, and stir until well fried.

  3. Add the chopped tomatoes and cook for 20 minutes.

  4. Combine the mixture with the soup and keep boiling slowly until reduced to 3 pints.

  5. Season with salt, pepper, and add red pepper pods for heat.

Serve

  1. Serve with a helping of rice in each soup plate.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Okra + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Onion + okratop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together715 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Okra + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together250 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Gives the soup its main body and rich, meaty flavor as it simmers.
Okra
Thickens the gumbo and adds a silky, slightly viscous texture when cooked.
Onion
Builds a savory, sweet base flavor when browned in the fat.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and fresh flavor that balance the rich fat and meat.
Ham or pork
Renders fat into the pan, adding savory depth to the base.

The step that matters

Frying the flour with the okra and onion. Stirring the flour in the hot fat until well browned cooks out its raw taste and helps thicken the gumbo. Stopping too early leaves a pasty flavor, while burning gives a bitter one.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, okra, tomato, pepper, rice):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Eggplantfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, okra, tomato, pepper, rice. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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