Name: Southern Gumbo Soup
Ingredients: 1 chicken, cut into pieces; 2 slices of bacon; 3 quarts boiling water; 1 onion; sweet herbs (tied in a bag); ½ teacup okra; ½ teacup rice; 1 glass of wine; 12 oysters with their juice

Why it works: Onion and okra match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 715 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Southern Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the chicken pieces and bacon until light brown.
Pour boiling water over the chicken and bacon.
Add the onion and bag of sweet herbs.
Simmer gently for 3.5 hours.
Strain the liquid and remove the fat.
Add the ham and chicken pieces back into the liquid.
Stir in the okra and rice.
Boil for 30 minutes.
Just before serving, add the wine and oysters with their juice.

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.

Onion + okratop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together715 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,769 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Okra + ricetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together250 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,814 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,433 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Swap the okra

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, rice, wine, oyster):

Potatofits better
Tomatofits better
Cucumberfits about as well
Okrathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, rice, wine, oyster. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.