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Chicken Gumbo

A stew of chicken, okra, ham, and aromatics simmered in lard and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Okra and tomato 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 ↓

Chicken Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the chicken and roll it in flour.

  2. In a large pot, heat enough lard to half cover the ham.

Stew

  1. Add the ham, okra, onion, and chicken to the pot.

  2. Pour in enough broth to cover all ingredients.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then stew gently until the chicken and vegetables are cooked through.

  4. If desired, add rice, tomatoes, parsley, thyme, bay leaves, and tarragon.

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. Okra + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Okra + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together715 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  5. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 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

Chicken
Provides the main protein; rolling in flour helps the surface brown and thickens the broth slightly.
Okra
Releases natural starch as it cooks, helping thicken the gumbo's broth.
Ham
Lends smoky, salty savoury flavour to the lard and broth.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth as it softens in the stew.
Lard
Fat that carries flavour and helps brown the floured chicken and ham.

The step that matters

Heating the lard until smoking hot before adding the ingredients. Very hot fat sears the floured chicken and ham, browning the surface and building flavour; lard that is not hot enough will stew the pieces grey and greasy instead.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, flour, okra, onion, ham, pepper, rice):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, okra, onion, ham, pepper, 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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