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Soup

Gumbo Filee

A chicken and ham gumbo with oysters, flavored with pepper, salt, and filé powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Gumbo Filee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Fry the chicken pieces until brown.

  2. Add the ham, onion, pepper, and salt.

  3. Pour in enough cold water to be 1/3 more than the soup required.

  4. Boil for about 5 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. 30 minutes before serving, add the oysters with their liquor.

  2. Just before serving, stir in 1 tablespoon of filé while the soup is barely simmering.

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

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Ham + oystertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Chicken + oystertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together972 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Browned pieces build savory flavor and, after long simmering, body in the broth.
Ham
Adds smoky, salty depth to the broth as it simmers.
Oysters
Add briny flavor and tender texture when cooked briefly at the end.
Filé
Thickens the soup slightly and adds an earthy, aromatic flavor when stirred in off the boil.

The step that matters

Stirring in the filé just before serving. Filé powder (ground sassafras leaves) becomes stringy and ropy if boiled, so it should be stirred in off the heat or at a barely simmer, just before serving.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, ham, pepper, oyster):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, ham, pepper, oyster. 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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