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Chicken Gumbo Soup

A soup of chicken, ham, okra, tomatoes, and cayenne pepper simmered in water and canned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Okra and tomato work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 327 recipes. Both carry damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Chicken Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Dice the ham and place it in a large kettle.

  2. Cover the ham with water and cook for 45 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Add the chicken, okra, tomatoes, and cayenne pepper to the kettle.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Can and process

  1. Place the soup in cans, cap them, tip them, and process.

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. Okra + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken meat
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender and savory as it simmers.
Lean ham
Adds smoky, savory flavor to the broth as it cooks.
Canned okra
Releases natural starch that thickens the gumbo and gives it body.
Canned tomatoes
Adds acidity, moisture, and a rounded tomato flavor to the soup.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat and a sharp, pungent note to the soup.

The step that matters

Place the soup in cans, cap them, tip them, and process.. A meat-based soup is low in acid, so it must be sealed and fully heat-processed to destroy spoilage microbes and harmful bacterial spores. Under-processing can make the canned product unsafe.

Swap the okra

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Okrathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, meat, ham, tomato, 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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