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French Gumbo

A French-style gumbo made with fowl, oysters, onions, and spices simmered in a butter and lard roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

French Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Season the cut-up fowl with salt and pepper.

  2. Dredge the seasoned fowl with flour.

Brown and simmer

  1. Heat the butter and lard in a soup kettle.

  2. Add the chopped onion to the heated butter and lard.

  3. Fry the fowl until browned.

  4. Add the boiling water to the pot. Cover the pot.

  5. Let it simmer for 2 to 3 hours.

Finish the gumbo

  1. Stir in the oysters with their liquor, thyme, and parsley.

  2. Stir in the filee powder.

  3. Season with cayenne 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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and flavourful during the long simmer.
Flour
Coats the fowl so it browns well and helps thicken the broth.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour and their liquor adds extra seawater taste.
Filee powder
Thickens the gumbo and adds a distinctive earthy flavour.
Butter and lard
Fat for frying that carries flavour and helps the fowl brown.

The step that matters

Fry the fowl until browned. Browning the floured fowl builds deep, savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale or crowded frying leaves the gumbo tasting flat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, butter, oyster, thyme, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, butter, oyster, thyme, parsley. 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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