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Gumbo Soup

A chicken and okra soup thickened with butter, served hot over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Fry the chicken until browned.

  2. Pour 1 gallon of boiling water over the chicken.

  3. Cook until the meat falls off the bones.

  4. Remove the bones from the soup.

Make the soup

  1. Prepare the okra and tomatoes.

  2. Add them to the soup.

  3. Boil.

  4. Add thickening.

  5. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  6. Stir in the butter.

  7. Add hot water as needed to maintain consistency.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with boiled 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. Okra + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  3. Okra + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together250 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

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

Chicken
Provides the meat and rich flavour that the broth is built on.
Okra
Releases natural mucilage that thickens the soup and gives it a silky body.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and sweetness that balance the richness of the broth.
Butter
Adds fat that rounds out flavour and gives a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Add thickening. Thickening added to a boiling soup can clump or scorch if not stirred in evenly. Adding it gradually while the soup is at a steady boil helps it disperse and set to an even consistency.

Swap the okra

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

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

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