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Chicken Gumbo

A hearty stew of beef, chicken, vegetables, and spices simmered in a broth with okra, tomatoes, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Chicken Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine beef, ham bone, half of the chicken (bones broken), green pepper, onion, and salt in a soup pot.

  2. Cover the pot with water.

  3. Simmer gently for 2 hours, skimming often.

Add the vegetables and finish the soup

  1. Add okra (cut and fried in a small amount of butter), potato, and stewed tomatoes (with sugar) to the pot.

  2. Add corn kernels and cobs.

  3. Continue to boil for another hour.

  4. Remove the bones and meat.

  5. Cut the meat into small pieces.

  6. Return the meat to the soup.

  7. Season with more salt, cayenne pepper, and Worcestershire sauce.

  8. Fry the remaining half of the chicken as you would for serving.

  9. Cut the chicken into small bits.

  10. Add the bits to the soup.

  11. Stir in the sherry wine just before serving.

  12. Serve with boiled rice on the side.

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 + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beef + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,148 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Potato + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Potato + okratop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Round beef
Releases flavor and body into the broth during the long simmer.
Okra
Adds thickening body and a distinctive texture to the soup.
Chicken
Contributes savory flavor from both the bones in the broth and the fried pieces.
Stewed tomatoes
Add acidity and savory depth to the broth.
Potato
Adds starch and body, softening into the soup.

The step that matters

Simmer gently and skim the broth. A gentle simmer keeps the broth clear and lets fat and foam rise to be skimmed off. Boiling hard would emulsify the fat into the liquid and cloud the soup.

Swap the okra

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ham, onion, potato, corn, chicken, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Okrathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, onion, potato, corn, chicken, 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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