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Okra Gumbo

A chicken and okra soup thickened with browned flour, flavored with ham, onion, and spices.

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

2 quarts of soup

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the base

  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.

  3. A few minutes before serving, thicken 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 meat and savory flavor as its surface browns in the fat.
Flour
Coats the chicken for browning and, browned, thickens the soup as its starch swells.
Okra
Releases mucilage into the liquid, giving the gumbo body and a silky texture.
Ham
Adds salty, smoky depth to the butter used for frying.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, building aroma into the broth.
Butter
Carries heat for frying and adds richness and browning to the chicken.

The step that matters

Thickening with browned flour. Flour clumps if dropped into hot liquid unmixed. Stir it into a little cooled liquid first, then add it to the simmering soup so the starch disperses and thickens evenly as it heats.

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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