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Okea Gumbo

A shrimp and okra gumbo simmered with onions, peppers, tomatoes, and lard, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and okra 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 ↓

Okea Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a porcelain-lined saucepan, heat the lard.

  2. Add the sliced onion and cook until golden brown.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook for a minute.

  4. Add the can of shrimp and cook for 4 to 5 minutes.

  5. Mix in the minced sweet pepper and canned tomatoes.

  6. Add the can of okra or fresh sliced okra and simmer for 10 to 20 minutes, stirring constantly.

  7. Gradually add the water, one cup at a time.

  8. Season with salt and pepper.

  9. Cook slowly for one hour 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. Tomato + okratop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Flour + okratop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together234 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the gumbo as it cooks with the fat and liquid.
Okra
Releases natural thickening, giving the gumbo body and a silky texture.
Shrimp
Supplies the main protein and savory seafood flavor.
Onion
Builds sweet, savory depth when browned in the fat.
Lard
Carries flavor and fat for browning the onion and starting the base.

The step that matters

Stirring the okra constantly while it simmers. Okra releases sticky mucilage and can scorch on the bottom of the pan; constant stirring prevents sticking and burning while the pot thickens.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, shrimp, pepper, tomato, okra, rice):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, shrimp, pepper, tomato, okra, 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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