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Gumbo Soup

A soup made from cold roast beef, bones, vegetables, and a brown flour paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine the cold meat and bones with enough water to cover them.

  2. Bring to a slow boil, skimming the surface regularly.

  3. Add the chopped young corn, gumbo, tomatoes, onion, celery, and salt to the pot. Allow the mixture to boil slowly.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a separate bowl, mix brown flour, brown sugar, wine or vinegar, butter, pepper, mustard, and spice to form a paste.

  2. Remove the bones from the pot before thickening the soup with the paste.

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. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Corn + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 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

Brown flour
Thickens the soup as it is stirred in, giving it body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the paste and the finished soup.
Wine or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the soup.
Tomatoes
Add acidity, moisture and savoury depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Remove the bones before thickening. Bones left in the pot can release fragments and keep cooking the broth, so removing them first gives a clean, evenly thickened soup when the paste is added.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, meat, corn, tomato, celery, flour, sugar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, corn, tomato, celery, flour, sugar. 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.

More gumbo recipes

Chicken 45Soup 37Okra 30Oyster 21Crab 8French 8 See all 76 →

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