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German Gumbo Soup

A chicken and okra soup with ham and oysters, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

German Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

  1. Coat the chicken in a mixture of flour, pepper, and salt.

  2. Fry the chicken in hot lard until golden brown.

  3. Add the sliced okra to the chicken and fry for 10 minutes, stirring constantly.

Simmer the soup

  1. Pour in 2 quarts of boiling water and add the slice of ham.

  2. Boil the mixture down to 1½ quarts.

  3. If desired, add the oysters and their juice about 10 minutes before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve the soup over a large spoonful of cooked rice in each plate.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + okratop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together727 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat and savory base of the soup as it simmers in the broth.
Flour
Coats the chicken so it browns in the lard and helps thicken the soup.
Okra
Releases starch as it cooks, giving the soup body and a slightly thickened texture.
Ham
Adds smoky, salty savoriness to the broth as it simmers.
Oysters
Add briny flavor and tenderness when stirred in near the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture down to 1½ quarts. Reducing the liquid concentrates the flavors of the chicken, okra, and ham. Stopping at the right volume keeps the soup seasoned and not watery.

Swap the okra

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

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

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