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Gumbo

A hearty soup made with chicken, onions, bacon, okra, tomatoes, and browned flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Okra and tomato work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 327 recipes. Both carry damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Fry the chicken pieces until golden brown.

  2. In a large pot, combine the fried chicken and water; bring to a boil.

  3. Add the fried onions and bacon; let it boil for 2.5 hours.

Finish and thicken

  1. Stir in the okra and stewed tomatoes; season with salt and pepper. Boil for an additional hour.

  2. Add sugar and thicken the soup with browned flour.

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 + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Onion + okratop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together715 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Okra + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together234 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main meat and flavor that the long simmer draws into the broth.
Okra
Releases natural thickening starch into the soup as it cooks slowly.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup and adds a toasted, nutty flavor.
Onions
Build a sweet, savory base as they cook down in the broth.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body that round out the rich broth.

The step that matters

Thickening with browned flour. Flour added directly to hot liquid can clump, so it should be well browned and stirred in gradually to thicken the soup smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Eggplantfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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