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Gumbo Soup

A chicken and ham gumbo with oysters, sassafras, and flour thickening, served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,769 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the chicken

  1. Coat the chicken pieces in flour.

  2. In a pan, melt the butter and fry the chicken until golden brown.

Simmer the soup

  1. Transfer the chicken to a soup pot and pour in the hot water.

  2. Simmer slowly for 2 hours.

  3. Mix a little flour and butter together to thicken the soup, then stir in the pepper and salt.

  4. Add the oyster juice to the soup.

  5. Include the slices of ham and let everything boil together for 10 minutes.

  6. Just before serving, stir in the sassafras leaves and simmer for 5 minutes.

  7. Finally, add the oysters and serve in a deep dish, garnished with rice.

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

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

  2. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Oyster + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main meat and flavour, browned first to build colour and savoury depth.
Flour
Coats the chicken and, mixed with butter, thickens the soup.
Butter
Fat for frying the chicken and for the roux that thickens the soup.
Oysters
Add briny flavour and tender texture; added last so they do not overcook.
Sassafras leaves
Adds the distinctive earthy, aromatic flavour that defines this gumbo.

The step that matters

Adding the oysters last. Oysters cook very quickly and turn firm and rubbery if boiled for long, so they should go in just before serving and only heat through.

“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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