Skip to main content
Main

Gumbo

A stew of chicken, tomatoes, okra, butter, flour, and water served over dry steamed rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and okra 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 ↓

Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gumbo

  1. Fry the chicken until browned in 1 tablespoon of butter.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of flour and mix well.

  3. Pour in ½ gallon of boiling water and cook until the meat slips from the bones.

  4. Add sliced okra and tomatoes, then season with salt and pepper.

  5. Add hot water as needed while it boils down.

Serve

  1. Serve with dry steamed rice.

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. Tomato + okratop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  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. Okra + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together234 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Browning in butter builds savory flavor, and simmering in liquid makes the meat tender enough to fall from the bones.
Okra
Its sliced pieces release natural thickening starch into the simmering liquid, giving the gumbo body.
Tomatoes
Adds acidity and moisture, contributing tang and helping build the broth's depth as it cooks down.
Flour
Stirred into the browned pan, it helps thicken the broth and give it a fuller texture.

The step that matters

Adding the hot water as needed while it boils down. Adding cold liquid can drop the simmer and stall cooking, while a rolling boil reduces too fast and concentrates salt. Adding hot water keeps the temperature steady and the gumbo at the right thickness.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, okra, butter, flour, pepper, rice):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, okra, butter, flour, 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.

More gumbo recipes

Chicken 45Soup 37Okra 30Oyster 21Crab 8French 8 See all 76 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes