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Mississippi Gumbo Soup

A hearty soup of chicken, okra, tomatoes, onion, ham, and eggs simmered with butter and crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Mississippi Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken and okra

  1. Fry the chicken until very brown, then remove it to a dish.

  2. Fry the sliced okra in the chicken gravy, then add it to the chicken without the grease.

  3. Place the chicken and okra in a pot with cold water.

Simmer and finish

  1. Add the sliced tomatoes, chopped onion, ham, and salt to taste.

  2. Cook slowly for 1 hour.

  3. Add the soda crackers, butter, and black pepper, but do not boil the pepper.

  4. For added richness, stir in the chopped hard-boiled eggs.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Okra
Releases natural thickening that gives the gumbo its body as it cooks.
Soda crackers
Absorb liquid and thicken the broth, adding body to the gumbo.
Butter
Adds fat for a rounder, richer mouthfeel in the finished broth.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and fresh flavor that balances the rich chicken broth.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and body to the finished gumbo.

The step that matters

Do not boil the black pepper. Pepper added to a boiling liquid for a long time can turn bitter and harsh, so it is added at the end with the heat kept gentle.

Swap the okra

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, tomato, onion, ham, butter, pepper, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, tomato, onion, ham, butter, pepper, egg. 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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