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Southern Gumbo Soup

A hearty soup made with chicken, crabs, ham, lard, onion, red pepper, and optional okra or dried sassafras, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and okra match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 715 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Southern Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the chicken and crabs as for soup or stew.

  2. In an iron pot, heat the lard and add the onion, red pepper, and salt.

  3. Dust the chicken and crabs with flour and brown them in the pot.

Simmer

  1. Add enough water to cover the ingredients and bring to a boil.

  2. Let it simmer for 3 to 4 hours.

  3. Just before serving, add the filet or okra to thicken the soup.

Serve

  1. Serve the gumbo soup with cooked 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. Onion + okratop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together715 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Okra + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together250 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Flour + okratop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together234 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main meat and flavor as it simmers into the broth.
Crabs
Adds seafood flavor and sweetness to the broth during simmering.
Flour
Dusting helps the chicken and crabs brown and lightly thickens the soup.
Onion
Softens and sweetens in the hot fat, building the base flavor of the soup.
Filet or okra
Added near the end to thicken the soup.

The step that matters

Browning the chicken and crabs after flouring. Browning in hot lard develops deep, roasted flavors through the Maillard reaction. Flour on the surface helps the pieces brown and gives the broth body, so they should be seared rather than steamed.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, crab, ham, pepper, flour, okra, rice):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, crab, ham, pepper, flour, okra, rice. 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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