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Mammy's Chicken Gumbo

A stew of chicken, okra, salt pork, tomatoes, and ham flavored with sassafras.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Mammy's Chicken Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Roll each piece of chicken in flour.

Brown the base

  1. In a deep kettle, render the salt pork until crispy.

  2. Add the sliced onion and sauté until soft.

  3. Add the chicken pieces and fry until golden brown.

Simmer and finish

  1. Pour in the water and boil slowly until the chicken is almost cooked.

  2. Stir in the ham, okra, tomatoes, and red pepper pod.

  3. Cook until all ingredients are very tender.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, then stir in the sassafras powder just before serving.

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. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Okra + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Okra + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together715 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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
Browning in fat develops flavor on the surface, and slow simmering makes the meat tender.
Salt pork
Rendered fat carries flavor through the pot and browns the chicken.
Okra
Releases its natural mucilage, which thickens the gumbo as it cooks.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the broth.
Onion
Softened in fat, it builds a sweet, aromatic base.
Sassafras powder
Adds a distinctive earthy aroma when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Browning the chicken. Frying the floured chicken until golden brown builds deep flavor through the Maillard reaction. Pale chicken yields a flatter gumbo, and the flour coating helps the surface brown evenly.

Swap the okra

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pork, tomato, onion, pepper, ham. 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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