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Chicken Gumbo

Chicken gumbo is a stew of chicken, onions, tomatoes, okra, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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.

  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 dish once simmered in the stew.
Flour
Coats the chicken so it browns in the dripping and helps thicken the liquid.
Strained tomatoes
Add acidity and liquid, building the base of the sauce.
Okra
Releases natural starch during cooking, adding body and thickening the gumbo.

The step that matters

Frying the floured chicken until light brown. Browning the floured chicken in fat builds flavour through the Maillard reaction and gives the stew its colour. Frying too hot can scorch the flour, leaving a bitter taste.

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.

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