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Crab Gumeo

A crab stew with onions, okra, ham, tomatoes, flour, lard, and water, seasoned with salt and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Crab Gumeo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald and clean the crabs, but do not boil them.

Make the base

  1. Heat the lard in a hot iron stew pan and add the diced ham; brown it.

  2. Add the sliced onion and brown carefully.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook until very brown.

  4. Add the tomatoes and a quart of boiling water to thin the mixture.

Simmer and serve

  1. Transfer everything to a granite pot, then add the crabs and okra.

  2. Boil for at least one hour, seasoning with salt and red pepper during the last 15 minutes.

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 + 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

Crabs
Provide the main protein and sweet, briny flavor that defines the gumbo.
Flour
Browned in the fat to thicken the broth and add a nutty, toasted flavor.
Okra
Releases natural mucilage during long cooking, helping thicken the gumbo.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it browns, building savory depth in the base.
Ham
Browned in lard to add smoky, savory flavor to the base.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the broth, balancing the rich browned roux.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour must be cooked until very brown without scorching; underbrowned flour thickens less flavorfully, while burnt flour turns bitter and ruins the gumbo.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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

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