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Plain Gumbo Soup

A simple gumbo soup made with ham, veal, water, okra, oysters, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and oyster work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 360 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Plain Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the ham and veal in a pot with 2 quarts of cold water.

  2. Simmer slowly for 2 to 3 hours.

  3. Add 2 quarts of boiling water.

Finish and serve

  1. Twenty minutes before serving, add the okra and oysters.

  2. Season to taste.

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. Ham + oystertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together360 recipes

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

  2. Ham + vealtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

  3. Okra + oystertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together71 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Veal + oystertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together988 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Ham + okratop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Gives smoky, savoury flavour to the broth as it simmers.
Veal knuckle
Releases gelatin and body into the broth during slow simmering.
Okra
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it a silky body.
Oysters
Add briny, delicate seafood flavour near the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Adding the okra and oysters. Oysters cook quickly and turn tough and rubbery if overcooked, so they are added only near the end. Okra also thickens the soup more the longer it cooks, so timing controls both texture and flavour.

Swap the okra

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, veal, oyster):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Okrathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, veal, oyster. 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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