Why it works: Okra and turnip share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Gumbo Josephine
Ingredients
Directions
Combine the mashed crabs, okra, tomatoes, eggs, carrots, turnips, onions, bay leaf, and thyme in a pot.
Clarify the mixture as you would for consomme.
Cook the consomme for four hours.
Garnish with lake shrimps, oysters, crab meat, and additional tomatoes and okra before serving.
Serve with boiled Louisiana rice.
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.
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Okra + turniptop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together53 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,002 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together4,563 recipes
Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
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Okra + tomatotop 3% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together327 recipes
Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).
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Turnip + thymetop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,352 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the tomato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, okra, egg, carrot, turnip, onion, thyme):
- Leekfits better
- Parsnipfits better
- Chivefits better
- Tomatothe original
Fit is the average pairing score against crab, okra, egg, carrot, turnip, onion, thyme. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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