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French Gumbo

A stew of fowl, oysters, and spices simmered in a butter and lard base.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

French Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Season the cut-up fowl with salt and pepper, then dredge it with flour.

Brown and simmer

  1. In a soup kettle, heat the butter and lard, then add the chopped onion.

  2. Fry the fowl until it is browned.

  3. Add the boiling water to the kettle and cover it.

  4. Let it simmer for 2 to 3 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the oysters with their liquor, thyme, and parsley.

  2. Just before serving, stir in the filé powder and season with cayenne pepper.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Coats the fowl so it browns well and helps thicken the gumbo's broth.
Filé powder
Adds a distinctive earthy flavor and thickens the broth when stirred in at the end.
Oysters
Contribute a briny, savory flavor and tender texture to the finished gumbo.
Fowl
Provides the main meat and rich flavor that the broth is built on.

The step that matters

Stir in the filé powder just before serving. Filé powder thickens liquid and can turn stringy or ropy if boiled, so it should be stirred in off the heat or at the very end, not simmered for long.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, butter, oyster, thyme, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, butter, oyster, thyme, parsley. 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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