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French Gumbo

A gumbo made with whole chicken, okra, peppers, and lard, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

French Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. While the chicken is frying, slice the okra and green or red pepper.

  2. Season the okra and pepper with coarse sea salt and flour.

Make the gumbo

  1. Fry the whole chicken in lard until brown.

  2. Once the chicken is brown, remove it from the pan and add the okra to the same lard.

  3. Fry the okra until brown.

  4. Pour 1 gallon of boiling water over the fried okra and let it boil for 30 minutes.

  5. Add the chicken back into the pot and simmer until fully cooked.

Serve

  1. Serve with a spoonful of boiled rice in the center of each plate.

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. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

  3. Okra + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together234 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Okra + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together727 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Okra
Thickens the gumbo liquid as it cooks, giving it a silky body.
Flour
Coats the okra and helps brown it, adding color and body to the gumbo.
Whole chicken
Provides the main protein and browned flavor from frying in lard.
Lard
Fat for frying that browns the chicken and okra and adds rich flavor.

The step that matters

Frying the okra until brown. Okra is slimy when cooked, and browning it in hot fat helps reduce sliminess and builds deeper flavor before the water is added.

Swap the okra

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Okrathe original
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, flour, 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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