Name: French Gumbo Soup
Ingredients: 3 slices of bacon; 3 onions; 1 young, tender chicken; 1 quart tender okra pods; 3 green peppers; 2 quarts boiling water; Salt and pepper to taste

Why it works: Onion and okra match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 715 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

French Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Fry the bacon in a pot until light brown.
Chop the onions.
Add the onions to the bacon fat and fry until soft.
Cut the chicken into small pieces.
Add the chicken to the pot and fry until light brown.
Chop the green peppers and okra.
Add the green peppers and okra to the pot.

Simmer and serve

Pour in 2 quarts of boiling water.
Cook until tender.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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.

Onion + okratop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together715 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,814 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Okra + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together727 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Chicken + okratop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together320 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon: Its rendered fat carries the flavour for frying the onions and chicken.
Onions: Softened in bacon fat, they build a sweet, savoury base for the gumbo.
Chicken: Browned in the pot, it adds savoury flavour and becomes tender as the gumbo cooks.
Okra: Its pods release natural thickening as they cook in the liquid.
Green peppers: They add a fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavour to the gumbo.