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Gumbo Soup

A hearty soup made with fowl, oysters, okra, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Okra and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 145 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fowl

  1. Season the cut-up fowl with salt and pepper, then dredge it with flour.

  2. In a soup kettle, melt the butter and lard, then add the chopped onion.

  3. Fry the fowl until well browned.

Simmer the soup

  1. Add 4 quarts of water and cover the pot, allowing it to simmer for 2 hours.

  2. After 2 hours, add the oysters, chopped okra, and thyme, then simmer for an additional 30 minutes.

  3. Just before serving, stir in the feuille powder and cayenne pepper.

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 + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 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

Fowl
Provides the meat and flavour that the broth is built on as it simmers.
Flour
Dredging coats the fowl and helps thicken the broth as it cooks.
Okra
Releases natural thickening starch into the soup during simmering.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour and tender texture when added near the end.
Butter and lard
Fat for frying the fowl and onion, adding browning and richness.

The step that matters

Frying the fowl until well browned. Deep browning through the flour coating builds roasted, savoury flavour compounds via the Maillard reaction, which later carry into the broth. Pale frying leaves the soup tasting flat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, butter, oyster, okra, thyme):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, butter, oyster, okra, thyme. 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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