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Pork Gumbo

A stew of pork, onions, bell peppers, tomatoes, okra, and salt, simmered for hours and served over rice or hominy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and okra work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 327 recipes. Both carry damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Pork Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fry the diced pork in a pan until pale brown.

  2. Add the sliced onions and cook until they are brown.

Simmer

  1. Stir in the sliced bell peppers and peeled tomatoes, along with the salt.

  2. Let the mixture boil gently for 1½ hours, stirring frequently.

  3. Add the diced okra and cover the pot.

  4. Boil for an additional 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with a large dish of rice or hominy.

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. Tomato + okratop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Onion + okratop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together715 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + okratop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together727 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork
Browning in the pan adds savory flavor, and long simmering makes the meat tender.
Onions
Browning them adds sweetness and depth to the base of the gumbo.
Tomatoes
Their acidity and liquid help form the sauce and balance the richness of the pork.
Okra
Its pectin thickens the gumbo as it cooks, giving it body.

The step that matters

Adding the okra and simmering. Okra thickens the liquid through its natural pectin, but prolonged boiling can break it down into a slimy, dull texture. Keep the heat gentle and cover the pot so the okra softens evenly without scorching.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, tomato, okra):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, tomato, okra. 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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