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Gumbo Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 base

  1. In a porcelain kettle, stew the tomatoes.

  2. Add the okra, thyme, parsley, and chopped onion to the tomatoes and cook until tender.

Add the chicken and eggs

  1. Fricassee the chicken in ham gravy.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with vinegar and lemon juice, then season with salt and pepper.

  3. Pour the egg mixture over the chicken and combine with the tomato mixture.

Simmer

  1. Add enough water to nearly fill the kettle and boil everything together for 4 to 5 hours.

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
Break down into the body and acidity of the gumbo base.
Okra
Releases mucilage that thickens the liquid as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the liquid when combined with the hot mixture.
Chicken
Provides the main protein, becoming tender during long simmering.
Ham gravy
Adds savory, meaty depth to the chicken and overall dish.

The step that matters

Combining the egg mixture with the hot chicken and tomatoes. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble if they meet very hot liquid too quickly. Combining them gradually and keeping the mixture moving helps keep the texture smooth.

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.

More gumbo recipes

Chicken 45Soup 37Okra 30Oyster 21Crab 8French 8 See all 76 →

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