Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Gumbo

A simple gumbo made with chicken stock, okra, green pepper, and cooked rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Chicken Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, combine chicken stock, okra, and green pepper.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook for 20 minutes.

  3. Stir in the cooked rice and serve.

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

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

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

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

  3. Okra + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together727 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + okratop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together320 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken stock
Provides the liquid base and savory flavor of the dish.
Okra
Releases mucilage as it cooks, which thickens the broth.
Cooked rice
Adds body and makes the dish more filling.

Swap the okra

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Okrathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, 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.

You might also like