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French Gumbo

A gumbo made with fried chicken, okra, bacon or pork, red pepper, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

French Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fry the chicken until brown.

Make the gumbo

  1. Add 2 quarts of water, okra, middling, red pepper, and salt.

  2. Let it simmer for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with plainly cooked 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. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Okra + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together727 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Chicken + okratop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together320 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Okra + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together189 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Okra
Releases a natural thickening that gives the gumbo its body during simmering.
Chicken
Browning builds savory flavor that carries into the simmered broth.
Middling
Adds smoky, fatty richness to the broth as it cooks.

Swap the okra

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pork, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Okrathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pork, pepper. 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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