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Ochra Gumbo Soup

A gumbo soup made with okra, parsley, onion, fowl, and lard or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and okra match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 206 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ochra Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the lard or butter in a large pot.

  2. Stir in the flour while hot.

  3. Add the chopped parsley, onion, and okra; fry until brown.

  4. Add the cut-up fowl and fry until fully cooked.

  5. Pour in the hot water and boil until reduced by half.

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. Parsley + okratop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together206 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + okratop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together715 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Provides the main protein and rich meaty flavour that the broth carries.
Okra
Releases natural thickening that gives the soup its body and silky texture.
Flour
Cooked in the hot fat, it helps thicken the soup and adds body.
Onion
Browns in the fat, building sweetness and savoury depth in the base.
Lard or butter
Provides the cooking fat that carries flavour and helps the vegetables brown.

The step that matters

Frying the okra and onion until brown. Browning caramelises the onion's sugars and develops deeper flavour. Okra is sticky and can release its slime quickly, so it needs enough heat and stirring to brown rather than stew.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, parsley, okra):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, parsley, okra. 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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