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Gumbo Soup

A hearty stew of ham, chicken, okra, tomatoes, onions, parsley, thyme, chili pepper, and crab or oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Fry the ham in a kettle until partly cooked.

  2. Add the chicken pieces and fry for 5 minutes.

  3. Pour in the water and boil for 2 hours.

  4. Remove the bones from the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the okra, tomatoes, onions, parsley, thyme, chili pepper, and salt.

  2. Boil for 1.5 hours.

  3. Stir in the butter and add the crab or oysters before serving.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Okra + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together206 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Okra + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Okra + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Gives the soup its meaty body and flavor as it simmers into the broth.
Okra
Releases natural thickening mucilage that gives the gumbo its body.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and a bright flavor that balances the rich broth.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel at the end.
Crab or oysters
Add briny seafood flavor and tender texture to the finished soup.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, chicken, okra, tomato, parsley, thyme, 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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