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Mississippi Gumbo Soup

A hearty soup of chicken, okra, tomatoes, onion, smoked ham, and soda crackers, simmered slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Mississippi Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken and okra

  1. Fry the chicken until very brown.

  2. Remove the chicken from the pan.

  3. In the same pan, fry the sliced okra in the chicken gravy.

  4. Combine the chicken and okra in a large pot with cold water.

Simmer and finish

  1. Add the sliced tomatoes, onion, smoked ham, and salt.

  2. Cook slowly for 1 hour.

  3. Stir in the broken soda crackers, butter, and black pepper.

  4. If desired, add chopped hard boiled eggs.

  5. Heat thoroughly.

  6. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Okra
Its sliced pieces release starch as they cook, thickening the gumbo and giving it body.
Soda crackers
Broken crackers soak up liquid and act as a thickener, softening into the broth.
Chicken
Browning the chicken builds deep, savory flavor in the pan gravy that carries into the pot.
White onion
Softens during the long simmer, adding sweetness and aromatic base flavor.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and liquid, rounding out the flavor of the broth.
Smoked ham
Contributes smoky, salty meat flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Frying the chicken until very brown. Browning creates fond and Maillard flavors in the pan. Scraping that color into the gravy gives the gumbo its depth, so pale chicken makes a flat-tasting broth.

Swap the okra

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, tomato, onion, ham, butter, pepper, 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.

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