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Gumbo Soup

A stew of chicken, okra, tomatoes, onions, and seasonings served over rice.

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

Make the gumbo

  1. Fry the young chicken until brown.

  2. Place the chicken in cold water with 1 onion, salt, pepper, and 1 quart of okra.

  3. Cook until thoroughly done.

  4. Add 2-3 ripe tomatoes 20 minutes before finishing cooking.

  5. For variation, fry 1 grown chicken and boil it in a pot of water for 2 hours.

  6. Add 1 quart of sliced tomatoes and 1 quart of sliced okra, and boil for 3 more hours.

  7. Half an hour before serving, add 1 small chopped onion, salt, pepper, and sugar to taste.

  8. Optionally, add a small slice of boiled ham for extra flavor.

Serve

  1. Serve 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. 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

Young chicken
Provides the meat and rich broth that forms the base of the stew.
Okra
Releases natural thickening mucilage that gives the gumbo its body.
Ripe tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture that brighten the broth and balance the richness.
Onion
Adds aromatic depth and sweetness as it softens into the broth.

The step that matters

Add the tomatoes 20 minutes before finishing. Tomatoes added too early break down completely and dull the fresh flavor, while adding them late keeps their acidity bright and their shape intact.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, okra, tomato, sugar, ham, 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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