Skip to main content
Main

Gumbo Soup

A tomato and okra stew with chicken, egg yolks, vinegar, lemon juice, and water, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 vegetables

  1. Stew the tomatoes in a porcelain kettle.

  2. Cut the okra into fine shreds.

  3. Add the shredded okra, thyme, parsley, and chopped onion to the tomatoes.

  4. Cook until the vegetables are quite tender.

Prepare the chicken

  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 over the fricassee chicken.

Combine and cook

  1. Add the chicken mixture to the tomatoes.

  2. Nearly fill the kettle with water.

  3. Boil everything together for four to five 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
Form the base of the soup and add acidity and body as they cook down.
Okra
Releases mucilage when cut and cooked, thickening the soup and giving it a silky texture.
Chicken
Provides the main protein and savory flavor, braised in the ham gravy.
Egg yolks
Enrich the mixture and add richness and body when combined with the chicken.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture to the chicken. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if they meet hot liquid too quickly. Pouring them over the chicken in a controlled way helps keep the mixture 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipes