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Okra Gumbo

A stew of chicken, okra, onion, tomatoes, corn, and flour, served over dry rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Okra Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut up and wash the chicken.

  2. Flour the chicken well and season with salt and pepper.

Brown and simmer

  1. In a skillet, heat the lard and fry the chicken until golden brown.

  2. Remove the chicken and add the sliced okra and onion to the skillet. Fry until browned, then transfer to a soup pot.

  3. Add water, tomatoes, and grated corn to the pot. Boil slowly for three hours.

  4. Serve with dry 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. Corn + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Coats the chicken so it browns well and helps thicken the gumbo.
Lard
Fat for frying that browns the chicken, okra and onion.
Okra
Releases natural thickening that gives the gumbo its body.
Chicken
Main protein that flavours the broth as it cooks.
Onion
Softens and browns in the fat, adding sweetness and savoury depth.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the broth.

The step that matters

Frying the okra until browned. Okra is slimy when cooked wet, and browning it in hot fat before adding liquid reduces the sliminess and deepens flavour. Stirring it in the fat until it loses its gloss is the step most likely to be rushed.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, pepper, okra, tomato, corn, 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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