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Gumbo a LA Creole

A crab and shrimp gumbo with okra, tomatoes, and optional beef brisket, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Gumbo a LA Creole

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Brown the minced onion and garlic in beef drippings or butter.

  2. Add the sliced okra and cook until browned.

  3. Stir in the shrimp and brown them.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a soup pot and cover with 2 quarts of hot water.

Simmer

  1. Season the brisket with salt and pepper, dredge in flour, and brown on both sides in a little fat.

  2. Add the brisket to the soup pot along with the tomatoes and crabs, breaking the claws and bodies.

  3. Add the bay leaf, cover the pot, and simmer for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. To serve, place some crabs in each soup plate with a serving of gumbo and a tablespoon of 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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + okratop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Crab + shrimptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together123 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Okra
Releases thickening starch and body into the broth as it cooks.
Flour
Dredging the brisket gives it a browned crust and helps thicken the broth.
Canned tomatoes
Add acidity and liquid that rounds out the broth's flavour.
Beef brisket
Adds meaty richness and savoury depth to the broth during the long simmer.
Lake shrimp
Contribute sweet seafood flavour to the broth after being browned.
Crabs
Release their sweet flavour into the broth while simmering in the shell.

The step that matters

Browning the onion, garlic, okra and shrimp. Deep browning builds the roasted, savoury flavour base of the gumbo. Pale or burnt fats make the broth taste flat or bitter, so brown gently and evenly.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, onion, garlic, shrimp, okra, beef, 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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