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Ochra Gumbo

A tomato and okra gumbo with chicken, onions, and optional corn and lima beans, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Okra and lima beans share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 64 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Ochra Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine the tomatoes, okra, and water in a large pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Make the gumbo

  1. Fry the chicken pieces in oil in a skillet until browned.

  2. Add the browned chicken to the pot with the okra and tomatoes.

  3. Stir in the chopped onions, salt, and pepper.

  4. If using, add corn and lima beans.

  5. Let the mixture simmer gently for several hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with a tablespoon of boiled rice and a sprinkle of green pepper in each soup plate.

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 + lima beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Tomato + okratop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Corn + lima beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together222 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Break down into the liquid to form the body and tangy flavor of the gumbo.
Okra
Releases natural starch as it cooks, thickening the gumbo and giving it a silky texture.
Chicken
Browning in oil builds savory flavor, and simmering makes the meat tender and flavors the broth.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding aromatic depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for several hours. A gentle simmer lets the okra release its starch slowly and the chicken become tender without the broth scorching or the okra breaking into uneven pieces. A hard boil can make the texture ragged and the liquid cloudy.

Swap the lima beans

The recipe marks lima beans as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, okra, chicken, onion, pepper, corn, rice):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

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