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Mississippi Gumbo Soup

A hearty soup of chicken, okra, tomatoes, onion, ham, and soda crackers, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Okra and tomato 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 ↓

Mississippi Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the chicken

  1. Fry the chicken until very brown.

  2. Remove the chicken to a dish.

Make the gumbo

  1. Fry the sliced okra in the chicken gravy.

  2. Add the okra to the chicken without the grease.

  3. Place the chicken and okra in a pot with cold water.

  4. Add the sliced tomatoes, chopped onion, ham, and salt.

  5. Cook slowly for 1 hour.

  6. Add the soda crackers, butter, and black pepper.

  7. Do not boil the pepper in the soup.

  8. For richness, add the halved hard-boiled eggs.

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

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Browning in the frying step builds colour and savoury flavour for the broth.
Okra
Its natural mucilage thickens the gumbo as it cooks slowly.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the broth as they cook down.
Soda crackers
Help thicken the soup as they soften and absorb liquid.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and body to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Do not boil the pepper in the soup. Black pepper loses its aroma and can turn bitter when boiled for a long time, so it is best added late and kept below a boil.

Swap the okra

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, tomato, onion, ham, butter, pepper, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Okrathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, tomato, onion, ham, butter, pepper, egg. 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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