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Crab Gumbo

A stew of crabs, onions, butter, flour, ham, and filé powder 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 the crabs

  1. Wash the crabs thoroughly to remove sand.

  2. Remove the feelers and gills, then cut the crabs into quarters.

Make the gumbo

  1. Brown the onions in the butter with the flour in a pot.

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

  3. Pour in the cold water and bring to a simmer.

  4. Just before serving, sift in the filé powder and stir gently.

  5. Do not let it boil after adding the filé powder.

  6. Serve the gumbo with 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

Crabs
Provide the main protein and flavour that the gumbo is built around.
Butter
Carries fat for browning the onions and adds richness to the broth.
Onions
Browned in butter to build sweetness and savoury depth in the base.
Flour
Browned with the butter and onions to help thicken the gumbo.
File powder
Added at the end to thicken the gumbo and add its distinctive earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the filé powder. Filé powder thickens by binding to the liquid, and boiling it after adding makes the gumbo stringy and ropy. Stir it in off the heat, just before serving, and keep the gumbo from boiling.

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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