Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Gumbo

A stew of chicken, onions, tomatoes, okra, and spices simmered in a roux-like base.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and okra 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 ↓

Chicken Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Wash and season the chicken well.

  2. Roll the chicken pieces in flour.

Cook

  1. Fry the chicken with the sliced onion in good dripping until light brown.

  2. Add the strained tomatoes and more salt and paprika to taste.

  3. Bring to a boil, then add the sliced okra.

  4. Cook for 30 minutes after it begins to boil.

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

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Onion + okratop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together715 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Flour + okratop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together234 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein and body of the stew as it cooks down.
Flour
Coats the chicken, helping it brown and slightly thickening the cooking liquid.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it fries, adding aroma to the base.
Strained tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture, building the liquid of the stew.
Okra
Releases its natural starch during simmering, adding thickness to the gumbo.

The step that matters

Fry the chicken until light brown. Browning the flour-coated chicken in fat builds colour and roasted flavour through the Maillard reaction. Frying too briefly leaves the base pale and flat-tasting, while overheating can scorch the flour.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, flour, onion, okra):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Kalefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, onion, okra. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes