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Chicken Gumbo

A stew of chicken, pork fat, butter, tomatoes, okra, onion, and water served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and chicken match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Chicken Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the chicken

  1. Heat the fat, salt pork, and butter in a frying pan until hot.

  2. Add the chicken pieces and fry until browned.

Simmer the soup

  1. Transfer the chicken to a soup kettle and add tomatoes, okra, onion, salt, and cold water.

  2. Cook on low heat for 4 hours, ensuring it simmers and does not boil.

  3. Remove the chicken, dice the white meat, and return it to the soup.

  4. Bring the soup to a boil and 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. Pork + chickentop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Tomato + okratop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Okra + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together715 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Okra + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together250 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein and meat that flavours the broth as it cooks.
Okra
Releases natural thickening starch into the soup as it cooks slowly.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the broth as they break down.
Salt pork
Renders fat for browning the chicken and adds savoury, smoky flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness for browning the chicken.

The step that matters

Keep the soup at a gentle simmer. Holding the soup at a low simmer for four hours keeps the chicken tender and the broth clear. A hard boil toughens meat proteins and can break up the okra and tomatoes.

Swap the okra

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, butter, chicken, tomato, onion, rice):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Okrathe original
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, butter, chicken, tomato, onion, 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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