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Creole Gumbo Soup

A hearty soup made with chicken, onions, lard, flour, tomatoes, peppers, okra, and salt.

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 ↓

Creole Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut and joint the chicken as for frying.

  2. Dredge the chicken with flour.

Brown the base

  1. In an iron skillet, heat the lard.

  2. Stir in the flour and brown it carefully.

  3. Add the minced onion and the chicken; fry for 8-10 minutes until well browned.

  4. Add the tomatoes and cook for 3-4 minutes longer.

  5. Transfer the mixture to a soup pot and cover with water.

  6. Season with chopped peppers and salt.

Simmer and serve

  1. Boil rapidly for a few minutes.

  2. Reduce heat and simmer for 4-5 hours.

  3. One hour before serving, stir in the okra.

  4. Serve 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. 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. Flour + okratop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together234 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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 flavour that the gumbo is built around.
Flour
Browned in the lard to form a roux that thickens the gumbo.
Lard
Fat for frying and browning the flour and chicken.
Okra
Releases natural thickening that helps give the gumbo body during simmering.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and savoury depth to the simmering broth.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness as it cooks into the browned base.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour browned slowly in fat develops a nutty colour and flavour and thickens the liquid. If it is rushed or scorched, it turns bitter and dark, which spoils the gumbo.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, tomato, pepper, okra. 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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