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Gumbo Soup with Stock

A beef gumbo soup made with stock, onions, flour, butter, sugar, and sliced hard-boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Gumbo Soup with Stock

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Crack the bone of the beef shank and place it in a pot.

  2. Add enough water to cover the beef, then add salt, chopped onions, and pepper.

  3. Boil for six hours.

  4. Remove from heat, take out the bone, and cut the beef into small pieces.

  5. Return the beef to the pot.

  6. Mix flour with butter until browned, then add to the pot along with sugar.

  7. Slice the hard-boiled eggs and add them to the soup.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef shank
Long simmering breaks down connective tissue and bone, giving the broth body and savory depth.
Flour
Browned in butter, it thickens the broth and adds a toasty, nutty flavor.
Hard-boiled eggs
Sliced into the finished soup, they add soft texture and richness.
Onions
Cooked down in the broth, they add sweetness and aromatic flavor.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in butter. Flour browns quickly once it begins to color, and scorched flour turns bitter and dark. Stirring constantly and stopping at a nut-brown color keeps the flavor rich and thickening power intact.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, sugar, flour, butter, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, sugar, flour, butter, 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.

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