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Gumbo Soup

A tomato and okra-based soup with chicken, egg yolks, and herbs, simmered for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a porcelain kettle, stew the chopped tomatoes.

  2. Add the okra, thyme, parsley, and onion to the tomatoes and cook until tender.

Make the chicken and egg mixture

  1. Fricassee the chicken in ham gravy.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with vinegar and lemon juice, then season to taste.

  3. Pour the egg mixture over the fricassee chicken.

Combine and simmer

  1. Combine the chicken mixture with the tomatoes, adding enough water to nearly fill the kettle.

  2. Boil everything together for 4 to 5 hours.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Okra + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together206 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tomato + okratop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Okra + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Okra + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together715 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Break down into the liquid that forms the body of the gumbo.
Okra
Releases a natural thickening starch as it cooks, giving the gumbo body.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the mixture as they set gently with the hot liquid.
Chicken
Provides the main protein, with flavor absorbed from the ham gravy.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture to the chicken. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if they meet very hot liquid too quickly. Pouring them over the chicken and mixing gently helps them thicken smoothly rather than turning grainy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, okra, thyme, parsley, chicken, ham, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, okra, thyme, parsley, chicken, ham, egg. 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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