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Crab Gumbo

A gumbo made with crabs, onions, butter, flour, ham, sassafras powder, and served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Crab Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Divide the crabs into quarters.

  2. In a large pot, brown the onions in the butter with the flour.

  3. Add the crabs and chopped ham to the pot.

  4. Fill the pot with cold water and bring to a simmer.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, stir in the file and do not let it boil.

  2. Serve the gumbo with cooked 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 + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  2. Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Crab + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together311 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  5. Crab + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that carries the flavor of the browned onions and helps build the roux base.
Flour
Thickens the gumbo when browned with the butter, giving it body.
Onions
Browned to add sweetness and depth to the gumbo base.
Crabs
Main protein that releases flavor into the broth as it simmers.
File (sassafras powder)
Adds a distinctive earthy aroma and thickens the gumbo when stirred in off the heat.

The step that matters

Stir in the file without boiling. Boiling file makes it stringy and gummy and can dull its flavor, so it is added just before serving and kept below a boil.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (crab, butter, flour, ham, rice):

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against crab, butter, flour, ham, 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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