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Gumbo Soup

A hearty soup made with chicken, ham, onions, okra, tomatoes, rice, and a roux base.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dice the chickens, ham, and onions.

  2. Flour the diced ingredients and fry them until light brown.

  3. Fill the frying pan with boiling water and stir for a few minutes.

  4. Transfer the contents to a saucepan with 3 quarts of boiling water.

  5. Soak the okra in cold water for 20 minutes.

  6. Slice the okra thinly and add to the saucepan.

Simmer and finish

  1. Boil for 40 minutes, removing the scum.

  2. Boil for an additional 1.5 hours.

  3. Add the canned tomatoes and boiled rice 30 minutes before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  5. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 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

Chickens
Provides the main meat and savory flavor that the broth is built on.
Flour
Coats the diced ingredients so they brown and help thicken the broth.
Okra
Releases natural starch during long cooking, adding body and thickness to the gumbo.
Canned tomatoes
Adds acidity and sweetness that balance the rich, savory broth.
Onions
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, adding depth to the base flavor.

The step that matters

Fry the flour-coated ingredients until light brown. Browning flour and meat builds the deep, roasted flavor and color of the base. Stopping too early leaves the gumbo pale and flat, while going too far can scorch the flour and taste bitter.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Turnipfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, ham, onion, flour, okra, 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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