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New Orleans Chicken Gumbo Soup

A hearty soup of chicken, oysters, okra, and spices simmered for hours.

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 ↓

New Orleans Chicken Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

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

Cook

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

  2. Fry the chicken pieces until browned, then add the water.

  3. Cover the pot and let it simmer gently for 2 hours.

  4. Add the oysters and okra, and continue to simmer for an additional 4 hours.

  5. Just before serving, stir in the filet powder and a little 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
Provides the main body of meat and rich flavour to the broth as it simmers.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and helps browning of the chicken.
Lard
Adds fat for frying, helping the chicken brown well before simmering.
Okra
Releases natural thickening that gives the gumbo body and a silky texture.
Filet powder
Thickens the gumbo and adds its characteristic earthy, herbal aroma when stirred in at the end.
Oysters
Contribute briny, savoury flavour to the broth during simmering.

The step that matters

Frying the chicken until browned. Browning the floured chicken builds deep, roasted flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale chicken added to the water produces a weaker, less complex broth.

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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