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Chicken Gumbo

A stew of chicken, okra, ham, tomatoes, and vegetables simmered in butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Chicken Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut and wash the chicken, then boil it with desired vegetables.

  2. Once cooked, remove the chicken and pick the meat from the bones.

  3. Add the picked chicken meat and finely sliced ham to a pot.

Make the okra base

  1. In a separate pan, fry the okra in butter.

  2. Add flour to the okra and brown it.

  3. Mix in the tomatoes.

  4. Pour the chicken stock into the okra mixture and cook slowly until thickened.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  2. Serve with 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 + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together234 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Okra + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together727 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Okra
Releases a natural thickening effect that gives the gumbo body as it cooks.
Flour
Browned with the okra, it adds flavor and helps thicken the gumbo.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and sweetness that balance the savory broth.
Chicken
Provides the main protein and savory flavor from the meat and cooking stock.
Ham
Adds smoky, salty depth to the chicken mixture.

The step that matters

Browning the flour with the okra. Flour browned in fat develops a nutty, toasted flavor and color. Cooking it too briefly leaves a raw taste, while burning it gives a bitter flavor, so it needs steady attention.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

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