Name: Gumbo Soup
Ingredients: 1 onion; a small piece of ham; 1 whole chicken; 1 tablespoon rice; 1 pint okra, sliced; 1 pint sliced tomatoes; ¼ teaspoon red pepper

Why it works: Okra and tomato 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 ↓

Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

In a pot, fry the onion and ham until the ham is browned.
Cut the chicken into pieces, leaving the breast whole, and add it to the pot.
Stir in the rice.
One hour before serving, add the sliced okra, sliced tomatoes, and red pepper.
Cut the chicken breast into small pieces and return it to the soup.

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.

Okra + tomatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together327 recipes

Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).
Onion + okratop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together715 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,769 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Rice + okratop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together250 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,065 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Swap the onion

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

Capsicumfits better
Potatofits about as well
Spinachfits about as well
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, chicken, rice, okra, tomato, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.