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Gumbo Soup

A hearty soup made with chicken, okra, tomatoes, onion, and rice, flavored with cream and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

  1. Fry the chickens, okra, tomatoes, and onion together.

  2. While frying, pour in the boiling water and let it stew until the bones of the chickens can be picked out.

  3. Add the cream, boiled rice, salt, and peppers to taste.

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. Okra + oniontop 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
Provide the main protein and rich flavour as they cook down in the stew.
Okra
Releases natural thickening mucilage that gives the gumbo body as it cooks.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture that balance the richness of the fried ingredients.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth when fried at the start.
Cream
Adds fat and smoothness, softening the sharpness of the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Letting the chickens stew until the bones can be picked out. Simmering slowly long enough breaks down connective tissue and draws collagen and flavour from the bones into the liquid. Stopping early leaves the meat tough and the broth thin.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, okra, tomato, cream, rice, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, okra, tomato, cream, rice, pepper. 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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