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Oyster Gumbo

A gumbo made with chicken, lard, flour, water, ham, peppers, oysters, and fillet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and oyster work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 360 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Oyster Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Make the roux and brown the chicken

  1. Heat the lard in a pot and add the flour; cook until very brown.

  2. Add the chicken pieces and fry until browned.

Simmer the base

  1. Pour in the cold water and add the minced ham; let it boil slowly for 3 hours.

  2. One hour before serving, add oyster liquor to reach desired quantity and season with red and black pepper; boil closely.

Finish and serve

  1. About 15 minutes before serving, add the oysters and let them curl up and become firm.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in enough fillet to achieve a consistency slightly thinner than mush.

  3. Return to heat and boil for no more than 5 minutes.

  4. Serve immediately to prevent thinning.

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. Ham + oystertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Chicken + oystertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together972 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Browned with the lard to form a roux that thickens and flavours the gumbo.
Chicken
Browned first, then simmered to give the broth its main meaty flavour.
Oysters
Added near the end so they firm up and curl without overcooking, adding briny flavour.
Fillet
Stirred in off the heat to thicken the gumbo to its final consistency.
Lard
Fat in which the flour is browned, carrying flavour into the roux.

The step that matters

Adding the oysters at the end. Oysters turn tough and shrink when boiled too long. Adding them about 15 minutes before serving lets them firm and curl gently while staying tender.

“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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