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Soup

Gumbo Soup

A tomato and okra gumbo with chicken fricassee in ham gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

  1. Stew the tomatoes in a porcelain kettle until soft.

  2. Fricassee the chicken in ham gravy.

Make the gumbo

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

  2. Cook until all ingredients are quite tender.

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

Okra
Its natural mucilage thickens the liquid and gives the gumbo its characteristic body.
Tomatoes
They break down into the stewed base, adding moisture, acidity and body to the dish.
Chicken
Fricasseed in ham gravy, it supplies the main protein and absorbs the flavour of the gravy.
Onion
Chopped finely, it softens during cooking and adds savoury sweetness to the base.

The step that matters

Cook until all ingredients are quite tender. Okra and tomatoes must cook long enough to soften fully, which lets the vegetables melt into the base and release their thickening body. Stopping early leaves the gumbo thin and the okra fibrous.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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