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Chicken Gumbo

A stew of chicken and veal with vegetables, simmered in oil or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chicken Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat oil or butter in a large pot.

  2. Add minced onion, leek, carrot, and turnip; sauté until softened.

Brown and simmer

  1. Add chicken and veal pieces; cook until browned.

  2. If using, add sliced okra and stir well.

  3. Add water to cover and simmer until meat is tender.

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. Leek + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + okratop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Leek + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + okratop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together715 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, which becomes tender and flavourful during slow simmering.
Veal
Adds tender meat and body to the broth as it simmers.
Onion
Builds a sweet, savoury base as it softens in the hot fat.
Okra
Adds body and thickening to the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Browning the chicken and veal. Searing the meat until golden creates browned flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale, steamed meat gives a flatter, less rich gumbo, so the pieces should brown in batches rather than crowd the pot.

Swap the okra

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, veal, butter, onion, leek, carrot, turnip):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Okrathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, veal, butter, onion, leek, carrot, turnip. 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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