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Gumbo Soup

A hearty stew of veal, chicken, carrots, turnips, onions, oysters, and gumbo seasoning, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine veal, fowl, carrots, turnips, whole onion, and water in a soup pot.

  2. Boil for 5 hours.

  3. Remove the chicken, cut into small pieces, and set aside.

Make the roux and thicken

  1. Slice the two onions and fry them in butter until brown.

  2. Remove the onions and add the chicken pieces to the pan, frying until brown.

  3. Return the fried onions to the pan.

  4. Sprinkle in some flour while stirring continuously to avoid burning.

  5. Combine the flour mixture with the chicken.

  6. Strain the soup into this mixture and boil for an additional 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Wash the oysters and strain their liquor into the soup.

  2. Add the oysters and bring to a boil briefly.

  3. Mix the gumbo with the cold water and stir it into the soup while it is boiling.

  4. Do not let it boil after adding the gumbo.

  5. Serve the soup with a side of boiled rice, adding a spoonful to each bowl.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Carrot + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,477 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

Flour
Thickens the soup into a smooth body when cooked with the fried onions and chicken.
Oysters
Add briny, savoury flavour to the soup and their liquor enriches the broth.
Butter
Fats for frying the onions and chicken, building browned, savoury flavour.
Veal shin
Gives the stock body and rich, meaty flavour during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Do not let it boil after adding the gumbo. Once the gumbo mixture goes in, boiling can cause the thickened soup to separate or turn grainy and can toughen the oysters. Keeping it just below a boil preserves a smooth texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, carrot, turnip, butter, flour, oyster, rice):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, turnip, butter, flour, 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.

More gumbo recipes

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

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