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New Orleans Crab Gumbo

A hearty gumbo featuring crab, shrimp, bacon, ham, okra, tomatoes, and herbs simmered in boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

New Orleans Crab Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gumbo

  1. Fry the bacon in a large pot until golden brown.

  2. Add the onion, then the ham and okra, and let simmer for about 15 minutes, stirring often.

  3. Add the tomatoes, crabs, and shrimp to the pot.

  4. Pour in the boiling water, then add thyme, bay leaves, parsley, red pepper, and salt.

  5. Let the mixture simmer for 2 to 2½ hours.

Serve

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

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Okra + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon
Renders fat and browned flavor that starts the base of the gumbo.
Okra
Releases natural thickening that gives the gumbo body as it simmers.
Tomatoes
Adds acidity and liquid that balance the rich, fatty base.
Crabs
Contribute sweet meat and flavor to the broth during the long simmer.
Shrimp
Add sweet, delicate seafood flavor and tender texture to the gumbo.

The step that matters

Simmer for 2 to 2½ hours. A long, gentle simmer lets the okra thicken the broth and blends the flavors of the bacon, vegetables and seafood. Boiling hard can toughen the shrimp and crab meat, so keep the pot at a steady, gentle simmer.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Celeryfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Thymethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, ham, okra, tomato, crab, shrimp, pepper. 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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