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Okra Gumbo

A chicken and okra soup thickened with flour and browned flour, flavored with ham, butter, onion, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Okra and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 715 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Okra Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Dust the chicken pieces with flour.

  2. In a frying pan, melt the butter with the slice of ham.

  3. Add the chicken and fry until light brown.

  4. Add the sliced okra and fry for a short time.

Simmer and finish

  1. Pour in enough warm water to make 2 quarts of soup.

  2. Add the chopped onion and let it boil until a few minutes before serving.

  3. Thicken the soup with browned flour and season with salt, red pepper, and black 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. Okra + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together715 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Flour + okratop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together234 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Okra + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together727 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein and flavor that the broth absorbs as it simmers.
Okra
Releases natural thickening starch into the soup as it cooks.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup and adds a toasted, nutty flavor.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth as it cooks down.
Ham
Adds smoky, savory fat and flavor to the butter used for frying.

The step that matters

Frying the okra briefly. Okra is sticky and can clump or turn slimy when handled too long. A short fry sears the surface and helps limit the mucilage that thickens the soup unevenly.

Swap the okra

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, flour, butter, ham, onion, pepper):

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Okrathe original
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, butter, ham, onion, pepper. 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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