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Gumbo Soup

A hearty gumbo soup made with chicken, oysters, ham, sassafras leaves, and rice garnish.

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. Prepare the chickens as for a fricassee.

  2. Coat the chickens in flour.

  3. Fry the chickens in butter until light brown.

  4. Place the chickens in a soup pot.

  5. Pour in 3 quarts of hot water.

Make the soup

  1. Simmer the mixture slowly for 2 hours.

  2. Mix a little flour and butter together for thickening.

  3. Add salt to taste.

  4. Add the strained oyster juice.

  5. Add a few slices of cold ham to the soup.

  6. Boil gently for 10 to 12 minutes.

  7. Just before removing from heat, stir in 2 tablespoons of powdered sassafras leaves.

  8. Let it simmer for a few minutes.

  9. Add the oysters.

  10. Season with pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve in a deep dish.

  2. Garnish 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 main meat and flavour of the soup base after long simmering.
Flour
Coats the chicken for browning and, mixed with butter, thickens the soup.
Butter
Fries the chicken to a light brown, adding colour and rich flavour.
Oysters
Add their briny flavour and tender texture to the finished soup.
Powdered sassafras leaves
Adds a distinctive earthy aroma and flavour, traditional in gumbo.

The step that matters

Adding the sassafras leaves off the heat. Powdered sassafras becomes stringy and loses its flavour if boiled, so it is stirred in just before removing from heat and only simmered briefly.

“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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