Name: To Make a Crab Gombo
Ingredients: 12 small crabs (or 1.5 dozen if small); flour for dusting; boiling lard (or oil); 1/4 pound ham (optional); 1/4 pound butter (for Fast-Day dinner, instead of ham); 2 quarts tender okra; boiled rice for serving

Why it works: Okra and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 250 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

To Make a Crab Gombo

Ingredients

12 small crabs (or 1.5 dozen if small)
flour for dusting
boiling lard (or oil)
1/4 pound ham (optional)
1/4 pound butter (for Fast-Day dinner, instead of ham)
2 quarts tender okra
boiled rice for serving

Directions

Prepare

Prepare the crabs for stewing and sprinkle them well with flour.

Make the gombo

Heat the boiling lard in a pot flavored with onion.
Add the crabs and bits of ham to the pot.
In a separate pot, boil the okra until tender.
Add the boiled okra to the stock about 15 minutes before serving.

Serve

Serve the gombo as a thickened soup 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.

Okra + ricetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together250 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Flour + okratop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together234 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Crab + okratop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together33 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).
Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together812 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Crabs: Provide the main seafood flavor and body of the stew.
Flour: Coats the crabs and helps thicken the gombo as it cooks.
Okra: Releases natural mucilage that thickens the broth and gives it a silky texture.
Ham: Adds smoky, savory depth to the fat and stock.

“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.