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Gumbo or Okra Soup

A soup made with bacon or ham, onion, tomatoes, okra, parsley, and hot broth, simmered for three hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Gumbo or Okra Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fry the bacon or ham until the fat is rendered, then drain it off.

  2. In the same fat, fry the sliced onion until brown.

  3. Scald, peel, and cut the tomatoes.

  4. Cut the okra into thin slices.

Make the soup

  1. In a stew pot, combine the fried onion, tomatoes, okra, parsley, and hot broth.

  2. Cook slowly for three hours.

  3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  4. Serve hot.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tomato + okratop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Onion + okratop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together715 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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

Okra
Thickens the broth as it cooks down, giving the soup body and a silky texture.
Tomatoes
Provide acidity and liquid, forming the base of the soup's flavor.
Onion
Browning in the rendered fat builds sweetness and savory depth.
Bacon or fat ham
Its rendered fat carries flavor into the onion and seasons the soup.
Broth
Supplies the main liquid and savory background for the soup.

The step that matters

Cook slowly for three hours. Long, gentle simmering lets the okra soften and release its natural thickening, and lets the tomatoes and broth meld into one cohesive flavor. Rushing or boiling hard can leave the soup thin and uneven.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

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