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Okra Gumbo

A stew of chicken, ham, onions, okra, tomatoes, and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Okra and tomato 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 ↓

Okra Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the chicken

  1. Flour and fry the chicken, ham, and onions in a frying pan until light brown.

  2. Fill the frying pan with boiling water.

  3. Stir for one minute.

  4. Transfer the contents to a pot with 3 quarts of boiling water.

Simmer the gumbo

  1. Boil for 35 minutes.

  2. Remove any scum that rises.

  3. Soak the okra in cold water for 20 minutes.

  4. Slice the okra.

  5. Add the sliced okra to the pot.

  6. Let the mixture boil for 1.5 to 2 hours.

  7. Add the tomatoes 30 minutes before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled 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. Okra + tomatotop 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. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

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 flavours the broth as it cooks and browns.
Okra
Releases a thickening starch into the broth, giving the gumbo its body.
Onions
Browned with the flour and meat, they add sweetness and savoury depth to the base.
Ham
Adds smoky, salty fat that flavours the broth as it simmers.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and freshness that balance the rich, fatty broth.
Flour
Browned in the frying step, it adds toasty flavour and helps thicken the broth.

The step that matters

Browning the flour, chicken, ham and onions. Frying until light brown builds the toasted, savoury flavour base of the gumbo. Pale or burnt flour changes the taste and thickening, so the colour should be checked as it cooks.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Turnipfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

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