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Gumbo Soup

A chicken and okra soup seasoned with salt, pepper, and spice, optionally with onions, cabbage, and parsley, finished with butter crackers and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the chicken until almost done.

  2. Add the okra and season with salt, pepper, and spice.

  3. For variety, add chopped onions, cabbage, and parsley.

  4. Just before serving, break in the butter crackers and add the butter.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Okra + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together206 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Okra + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together715 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  5. Okra + cabbagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together35 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Okra
Releases starchy mucilage that thickens the broth as it cooks.
Butter crackers
Absorb liquid and add body, thickening the soup just before serving.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished broth.

The step that matters

Adding the butter crackers and butter just before serving. Crackers soften and thicken quickly in hot liquid, so adding them late keeps the soup from becoming pasty or overly thick. Butter added off the heat emulsifies into the broth for a smoother finish.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, okra, pepper, cabbage, parsley, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, okra, pepper, cabbage, parsley, butter. 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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