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Kentucky Gumbo Soup

A hearty soup made with squirrels or chickens, okra, onions, potatoes, carrot, cabbage, and flavored with sassafras, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Kentucky Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cook the squirrels or chickens until the flesh falls from the bones.

  2. Add the sassafras buds in a bag, okra, onions, potatoes, carrot, and cabbage to the pot.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

  4. Once cooked, remove the sassafras bag, squeeze it, and discard the buds.

  5. Add the red pepper and thicken the soup with scorched flour.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Okra + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together715 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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
Releases natural thickening starch that gives the gumbo body as it cooks.
Scorched flour
Thickens the soup as its starches swell in the hot liquid.
Potatoes
Soften during simmering and add body and substance to the soup.
Squirrels or chickens
Release flavor and gelatin into the broth as the meat cooks down.

The step that matters

Thickening with scorched flour. Flour must be stirred in well and cooked through, so it thickens smoothly without lumps or a raw starchy taste.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, okra, onion, potato, carrot, pepper, flour. 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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