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Gumbo Soup

A tomato and okra stew with chicken, ham gravy, thyme, parsley, and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

  1. In a porcelain kettle, stew the tomatoes until soft.

  2. Cut the okra into fine shreds and add it to the tomatoes.

  3. Add the chopped onion, thyme, and parsley to the mixture.

  4. Cook until everything is quite tender.

  5. Fricassee the chicken in ham gravy.

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 a soft base that gives the gumbo its body and acidity.
Okra
Releases natural thickening that gives the gumbo body as it cooks.
Chicken
Provides the main protein, cooked by fricassee in the ham gravy.
Ham gravy
Supplies savory flavor and liquid in which the chicken is cooked.
Onion
Adds savory aromatic flavor as it softens into the base.

The step that matters

Cook until everything is quite tender. Okra and tomatoes need enough time to soften fully; stopping early leaves the okra slimy-textured and the vegetables unevenly cooked, so the base lacks a smooth, cohesive body.

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.

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