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Southern Gumbo

A soup of okra, tomatoes, and chicken in lard and water.

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 ↓

Southern Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Heat the lard in a porcelain-lined boiler.

  2. Fry the sliced onion in the lard until browned.

  3. Add the sliced okra and fry until it no longer ropes from the spoon, stirring constantly.

  4. Pour in the hot water and boil down to 1 quart.

Add the tomatoes and chicken

  1. Scald the tomatoes, peel them, and cut into small pieces.

  2. Add the tomatoes to the soup.

  3. Dust the chicken parts with salt, pepper, and flour, then fry until light brown.

  4. Add the fried chicken to the gumbo 4 hours before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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

Okra
Releases a thickening sliminess that gives the gumbo its body.
Flour
Coats the chicken so it browns and adds a light crust.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture that brighten and loosen the broth.
Onion
Browns in the lard to build sweetness and savory depth.
Lard
Fat that carries the frying and adds richness to the base.

The step that matters

Frying the okra until it no longer ropes. Okra releases slime as it cooks; frying it while stirring constantly lets that mucilage cook off and thicken the gumbo, and stopping too early leaves the texture stringy.

Swap the onion

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

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

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