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Southern Gumbo Fela

A Southern gumbo made with chicken, oysters, and fela (okra) served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Southern Gumbo Fela

serve the family

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a pot, fry the chopped onion in hot lard until light brown.

  2. Dust in the flour, stirring constantly to prevent burning, until it turns brown.

  3. Pour in enough boiling water to serve the family, allowing for evaporation.

Cook the chicken and oysters

  1. Add the cut-up chicken and boil until tender.

  2. Strain the oyster liquor to remove shell pieces, then boil it briefly and skim.

  3. Add the oyster liquor to the pot, season with salt, black and red pepper, and garlic.

  4. Boil for 15 minutes, then add the oysters and stir in the fela.

  5. Once it boils again, it is ready to 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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + okratop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Browned in the fat, it thickens the broth and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Lard
Carries the onion and flour, adding richness and helping the roux brown.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the broth.
Fela
Thickens the gumbo and adds body to the broth.
Chicken
Provides the main meat and savoury flavour as it simmers in the broth.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour stirred in hot fat can scorch quickly. Constant stirring keeps it from burning, since burnt flour gives a bitter taste and cannot be rescued, while properly browned flour gives depth and colour to the gumbo.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Welsh onionfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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