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Chicken Gombo Soup

A hearty soup made with chicken, oysters, okra, filé powder, and spices.

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

Chicken Gombo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the chicken pieces with salt and black pepper, then dredge them in flour.

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, heat the lard and butter over medium heat and add the chopped onion.

  2. Fry the chicken pieces in the pot until they are browned.

  3. Add the water to the pot, cover, and let it simmer gently for 2 hours.

  4. Stir in the oysters and okra, and let it simmer for an additional 30 minutes.

  5. Just before serving, add the filé powder and a pinch of cayenne pepper.

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. Onion + okratop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together715 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Okra + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together234 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Chicken
Browning in fat gives the pieces flavor, and long simmering makes the meat tender and flavorful in the broth.
Flour
Dredging coats the chicken so it browns well and helps thicken the cooking liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a browned, nutty flavor to the frying fat.
Lard
Provides a high-heat frying fat that browns the chicken pieces evenly.
Okra
Releases natural mucilage that gives the soup body and a silky, slightly thickened texture.
Filé powder
Adds earthy flavor and thickens the soup when stirred in off the heat.

The step that matters

Adding the filé powder. Filé powder becomes stringy and ropy if boiled, so it should be stirred in just before serving, off the heat, to keep the soup smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, oyster, okra, flour, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, oyster, okra, flour, 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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