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Louisiana Gumbo

A stew of chicken, okra, onion, and red pepper simmered in water with flour coating, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Okra and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 715 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Louisiana Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Coat each chicken piece in flour and fry in lard until browned.

  2. Transfer the fried chicken to a kettle and cover with boiling water, adding the red pepper.

Cook the okra and onion

  1. In the same frying pan, cook the okra and onion until tender, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

  2. Pour the cooked okra and onion into the kettle with the chicken, adding more water if necessary.

Simmer and serve

  1. Boil everything together for one hour, stirring frequently. Keep the kettle on low heat to prevent burning.

  2. Season with salt and pepper to taste. The gumbo should be quite thick.

  3. Serve a spoonful of hot boiled rice in each soup 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. Okra + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together715 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  4. Flour + okratop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together234 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main meat and flavour, which is released into the broth as it simmers.
Flour
Coats the chicken so it browns in the lard and helps thicken the gumbo.
Okra
Releases natural thickening starch as it cooks, giving the gumbo its body.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, adding savoury depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Keeping the kettle on low heat during the hour-long boil. Thick gumbo with flour and okra scorches easily on the bottom of the pot. Low heat and frequent stirring prevent burning while the starches slowly thicken the liquid.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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