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Freed Gumbo

A gumbo made with chicken, okra, tomatoes, onions, butter, and flour, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Freed Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the chicken

  1. Fry the cut-up chickens in a skillet until browned but not scorched.

Simmer the gumbo

  1. Transfer the chickens to a pot and add the okra, tomatoes, and onions.

  2. Cover with boiling water and boil very slowly, keeping the pot tightly closed.

  3. Add more boiling water as it evaporates and simmer slowly for three hours.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, and mix the butter and flour together before adding.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled rice.

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

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Okra + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together250 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Tomato + ricetop 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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Browning in the skillet builds color and savory flavor before the long simmer.
Okra
Releases natural mucilage that thickens the broth as it cooks.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and liquid that blends into the broth.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, building aroma in the pot.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the broth.

The step that matters

Brown the chicken without scorching. Browning triggers Maillard reactions that create deep, savory flavor. Scorched bits turn bitter and can carry that bitterness into the whole pot, so keep the heat moderate and watch closely.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, okra, tomato, pepper, butter, flour, rice. 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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