Skip to main content
Main

Okra Gumbo

A stew of sliced okra, onion, tomatoes, and seasonings simmered in lard and hot water, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Prepare the base

  1. Fry the sliced okra in 1 tablespoon of lard.

  2. In a saucepan, heat 1 tablespoon of lard and add the sifted flour; stir until it turns deep brown.

  3. Add the chopped onion and stir until thoroughly cooked.

Make the gumbo

  1. Mix in the fried okra and any scraps of cold turkey or chicken; stir well.

  2. Add the tomatoes, cloves, Worcestershire sauce, and season with salt, red pepper, and black pepper.

  3. Slowly stir in the hot water and let it boil with the lid on until thickened to your liking.

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. Okra + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together715 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  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

Okra
Releases natural thickeners as it cooks, helping give the gumbo its body.
Flour
Browned in fat, it adds nutty flavour and thickens the gumbo.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, building the savoury base of the dish.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture, rounding out the flavour of the gumbo.
Lard
Carries heat evenly and adds richness to the okra and roux.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour cooked in fat must be stirred constantly until deep brown. Stopping early leaves a raw, pasty taste, while going too far scorches it and gives a bitter flavour that spoils the whole pot.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (okra, flour, onion, tomato, sauce, pepper, rice):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against okra, flour, onion, tomato, sauce, pepper, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes