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Chicken Gumbo

A preserved chicken and ham gumbo with okra, onions, flour, butter, and stock, canned for long-term storage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and okra match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 715 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chicken Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the ham cubes for 30 minutes.

  2. Make a smooth paste with the flour.

Make the gumbo

  1. Add the chicken, onions, and flour paste to the chicken-soup stock.

  2. Stir in the butter and salt, then boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Mix the powdered okra with the water, then add to the pot.

Can and process

  1. Fill glass jars or tin cans while hot and partially seal.

  2. Process in a hot-water bath for 90 minutes, or adjust time based on your canning method.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Flour + okratop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together234 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + okratop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together320 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, body-rich gumbo when cooked into a paste.
Powdered okra
Adds thickening and a silky texture as it dissolves into the hot liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries savory flavor and smooths the finished texture.
Ham
Contributes savory, smoky meat flavor to the stock during the initial boil.
Onions
Build aromatic sweetness and depth as they cook into the stock.
Chicken
Supplies savory meat flavor and tender pieces that enrich the stock.

The step that matters

Process in a hot-water bath. Jars must be partially sealed and processed for the full time at the right temperature so heat reaches the center and kills microorganisms. Shortchanging the time or ignoring the canning method can leave the contents unsafe to store.

Swap the okra

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, chicken, onion, flour, butter):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Okrathe original

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