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Gumbo Soup

A hearty chicken and okra soup seasoned with salt, pepper, and lard, served over steamed rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Okra and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 715 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Flour the chicken and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Heat hot lard in a pot and fry the chicken until browned all over.

Simmer and serve

  1. Transfer the chicken to a soup kettle and add 4 quarts of water.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook for 2 hours.

  3. Add okra pods, chopped onion, and additional salt and pepper to taste.

  4. Boil for 1 hour longer and serve with steamed 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 + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together715 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Okra + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together250 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Pepper + okratop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together727 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

Old chicken
Provides rich flavor and collagen that gives the broth body as it simmers.
Okra pods
Releases natural thickeners that give the soup a slightly silky body.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Browning the chicken in hot lard. Searing the flour-dusted chicken builds deep, roasted flavor through browning reactions. Pale chicken produces a flatter broth, so the pieces should be well browned on all sides before adding water.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, okra, 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.

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