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Simple Gumbo Filet

A chicken gumbo thickened with sassafras powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,958 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

Simple Gumbo Filet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Dredge the pieces of fowl in flour.

  2. Fry the fowl in lard until browned.

Make the soup

  1. Add pepper, salt, and water; cover and boil until well flavored.

  2. Thicken the soup with sassafras powder and let it boil once before serving.

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 + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  2. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Chicken and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,559 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the main protein and the flavor base for the soup.
Flour
Coats the pieces so they brown in the fat and help thicken the broth.
Lard
Fat for frying that browns the fowl and adds richness.
Sassafras powder
Thickens the soup and adds its distinctive aroma.

The step that matters

Browning the fowl in lard. Frying the floured pieces until deeply browned creates flavorful Maillard browning on the surface. Pale, undercooked coating will leave the broth tasting flat and may make the flour clump when the water is added.

“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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