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Shrimp Gumbo

A simple shrimp gumbo made with butter, tomatoes, onions, peppers, celery, parsley, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Shrimp Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a skillet, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the minced onion and cook until browned.

  3. Stir in the flour to thicken.

  4. Add the tomatoes, green pepper, celery, and parsley; mix well.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

Add the shrimp

  1. Thoroughly wash the shrimp and add to the mixture.

  2. Cook until the shrimp are pink and cooked through.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fats the skillet and carries the onion flavor into the base.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a loose, gravy-like body as it cooks.
Tomatoes
Provide liquid, acidity and body to the gumbo.
Shrimp
Supply the main protein, which firms and turns pink as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook the shrimp until pink and just cooked through. Shrimp turn firm and opaque within a few minutes of heat. Overcooking makes them tough and rubbery, so check them as the first pink shows and stop once they are cooked through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, tomato, parsley, celery, flour, shrimp):

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, tomato, parsley, celery, flour, shrimp. 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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