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Okra Gumbo

A chicken and okra stew thickened with flour and tomatoes, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme 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 ↓

Okra Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gumbo

  1. Sprinkle the chicken with flour and fry until brown.

  2. Add the chopped onion and okra, and fry together with the chicken.

  3. Pour in the boiling water and add the prepared tomatoes, salt, and pepper.

  4. Boil for three hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with 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. Parsley + thymetop 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. Okra + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together206 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Okra + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main meat and flavour, browned first to build colour and taste.
Flour
Coats the chicken for browning and thickens the gumbo liquid.
Okra
Releases natural starch as it cooks, helping to thicken and give the gumbo body.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it fries, adding aromatic base flavour.
Prepared tomatoes
Add acidity and liquid, balancing the richness of the chicken and okra.

The step that matters

Browning the chicken in flour. Frying the floured chicken until brown develops savoury, roasted flavours through the Maillard reaction. Pale chicken will leave the gumbo tasting flat and less rich.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Eggplantfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, okra, tomato, pepper, parsley, thyme. 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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