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New Orleans Gumbo

A stew of chicken, okra, tomatoes, onion, and optional shrimp, served over 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 ↓

New Orleans Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Disjoint the chicken and coat it in flour.

  2. Fry the chicken in hot grease until browned.

  3. Remove the chicken and place it in a pot of boiling water (about 2 quarts) with the grease.

Build the soup

  1. Fry the onion and add it to the boiling soup.

  2. Slice the okra and fry it, then add it to the soup.

  3. Fry the tomatoes for a few minutes and add them to the boiling soup.

  4. Season to taste and boil until the chicken is tender.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled rice and add shrimps for extra flavor.

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. 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 and rich flavor in the broth as it simmers and tenderizes.
Okra
Releases natural thickening starch into the soup, giving it body.
Tomatoes
Adds acidity and brightness that balances the rich, fatty broth.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth as it softens and browns in the grease.

The step that matters

Frying the chicken until browned. Browning the flour-coated chicken creates deep, roasted flavors through the Maillard reaction, which later carry into the soup. Pale frying gives a flatter, less developed broth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, okra, tomato, rice, shrimp):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, okra, tomato, rice, shrimp. 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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