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Gumbo Soup

A hearty stew of chicken, beef, okra, onions, tomatoes, and lard simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fry the chicken in lard until brown.

  2. Remove the chicken and fry the beef in the same lard.

  3. Fry the sliced okra until brown.

  4. Fry the chopped onions until soft.

Simmer and serve

  1. Combine the chicken, beef, okra, onions, and chopped tomatoes in a large pot.

  2. Add 3 quarts of water and boil for 2 hours.

  3. Season with pepper and sauce to taste, then 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. 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. Chicken + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,148 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  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

Chicken
Provides the main meat and flavour, browned in lard to build savoury depth.
Okra
Releases natural thickening starch during long cooking, giving the gumbo body.
Onions
Softened in fat to build a sweet, aromatic base for the broth.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture that balance the rich fat and meat.
Beef
Adds meaty depth to the broth as it browns and simmers.

The step that matters

Frying the okra until brown. Browning okra in fat reduces its slimy texture and deepens flavour, while the long simmer later draws out its thickening starch. Browning too little leaves the gumbo slick; too much can taste bitter.

Swap the okra

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, beef, onion, tomato, pepper, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, beef, onion, tomato, pepper, sauce. 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.

More gumbo recipes

Chicken 45Soup 37Okra 30Oyster 21Crab 8French 8 See all 76 →

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