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Gumbo Soup

A chicken and ham stew with oysters, sassafras, and flour thickening, served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Cut the chickens into pieces as for a fricassee and flour them well.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan and fry the chicken pieces until nicely browned.

  3. Transfer the chicken to a soup pot and pour in the hot water.

  4. Let it simmer slowly for two hours.

Make the soup

  1. Make a thickening by blending a little flour and butter together.

  2. Stir in the pepper and salt.

  3. Add the strained oyster juice to the soup.

  4. Add the slices of cold boiled ham.

  5. Let everything boil slowly together for ten minutes.

  6. Stir in the sassafras leaves.

  7. Let it simmer for five minutes.

  8. Add the oysters.

Serve

  1. Serve in a deep dish, garnished with rice.

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. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Oyster + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the meat that flavours the broth as it simmers for two hours.
Flour
Coats the chicken to brown well and thickens the soup as a roux.
Butter
Fat for frying the chicken until browned, adding richness and flavour.
Oysters
Add briny, savoury flavour and tender texture when added at the end.
Cold boiled ham
Adds smoky, salty meat flavour to the broth.
Sassafras leaves
Ground sassafras leaves add a distinctive aroma and act as a traditional thickener.

The step that matters

Adding the oysters at the end. Oysters cook quickly and turn tough and rubbery if simmered for long, so they should go in last, just until they curl at the edges.

“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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