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Gumbo Soup

A tomato and okra soup with chicken, ham gravy, beans, and egg yolk thickening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomato base

  1. In a porcelain kettle, stew the tomatoes.

  2. Add the okra, thyme, parsley, and onion to the tomatoes.

  3. Cook until tender.

Make the chicken and egg mixture

  1. Fricassee the chicken in ham gravy.

  2. Beat the egg yolks with vinegar and lemon juice in a bowl.

  3. Season the mixture to taste.

  4. Pour the egg mixture into the chicken.

  5. Combine the mixture.

  6. Add the chicken mixture to the tomatoes.

Make the bean broth and finish

  1. Fill the kettle nearly full with water.

  2. Soak the beans overnight in a separate pot.

  3. Add the beans and the soup bone to 6 quarts of water.

  4. Cook for 5 to 6 hours.

  5. Add cloves, salt, and pepper halfway through.

  6. Strain the soup through a colander.

  7. Press the bean pulp to thicken the soup.

  8. Serve with slices of hard-boiled egg and thinly sliced lemon.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Okra + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together206 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tomato + okratop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Okra + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together715 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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, acidity and flavour of the soup base.
Okra
Releases a thickening mucilage that gives the gumbo body as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with vinegar and lemon juice and thicken the chicken mixture when combined.
Turtle beans
Cooked and pressed to thicken the soup and add body.
Chicken
Provides the meat, fricasseed in ham gravy for savoury richness.

The step that matters

Pour the egg mixture into the chicken. Adding acidic egg yolks to hot liquid can curdle them. Tempering or adding them gently keeps the mixture smooth and evenly thickened rather than grainy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, okra, thyme, parsley, chicken, ham, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, okra, thyme, parsley, chicken, ham, egg. 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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