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New Orleans Gumbo

A stew of cold meat or fowl scraps, seafood, vegetables, and herbs thickened with arrowroot or flour, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and crab work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 448 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

New Orleans Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gumbo

  1. Combine scraps of cold meat or fowl, oysters, crabs, or shrimps in a pot.

  2. Add water and bring to a boil, skimming off any grease that rises to the top.

  3. Once skimmed, add vegetables and herbs.

  4. If meat and vegetables are browned, add boiling water in small quantities; otherwise, use cold water.

Thicken and serve

  1. To thicken, mix arrowroot, rice flour, or corn starch with a little cold water and stir in about 10 minutes before serving.

  2. Boil quickly after adding the thickening and serve hot.

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. Meat + crabtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

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

  2. Rice + arrowroottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Oyster + crabtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together95 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Meat + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Crab + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together117 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

Scraps of cold meat or fowl
Provides meaty flavour and body to the broth.
Oysters
Adds briny, savoury flavour to the broth.
Crabs or shrimps
Adds seafood flavour and sweetness to the broth.
Arrowroot or rice flour or corn starch
Thickens the liquid into a looser, silkier body when briefly boiled.

The step that matters

Adding the thickening. Starch must be mixed with cold water first so it does not clump, then boiled briefly to swell and thicken the liquid. Adding it dry or undercooking it leaves the gumbo thin or lumpy.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, oyster, crab, rice):

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, oyster, crab, 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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