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Gumbo Soup

A tomato and okra soup with chicken, simmered for hours and garnished with green bell pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and okra 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 ↓

Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gumbo

  1. In a kettle, combine the tomatoes, onions, okra, and chicken.

  2. Add 2 quarts of cold water, pepper, salt, and pot herbs.

  3. Bring to a boil and let cook for 4 hours.

  4. Remove the chicken when it is ready to fall apart.

Serve

  1. Before serving, add a few slices of green bell pepper.

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

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Onion + okratop 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. Tomato + chickentop 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

Tomatoes
Break down into the liquid, adding body, acidity and a fresh savory flavor.
Okra
Releases mucilage during long cooking, thickening the broth to a silky body.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, building the base flavor of the broth.
Chicken
Gives the broth its meaty flavor as it simmers and releases its juices.

The step that matters

Simmering the chicken for 4 hours. A gentle, sustained boil lets the connective tissue in the chicken break down so the meat becomes tender and the broth gains body. Boiling too hard can toughen the meat and cloud the broth, so keep the pot at a steady simmer once it reaches a boil.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, okra, chicken, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, okra, 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.

More gumbo recipes

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

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