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French Gumbo Soup

A soup made with bacon, onions, chicken, okra, green peppers, and water, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and okra 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 ↓

French Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the bacon in a pot until light brown.

  2. Slice the onions and fry them in the bacon fat.

  3. Cut the chicken into small pieces and fry with the bacon and onions until light brown.

  4. Add the finely chopped green peppers and small pieces of okra.

  5. Pour 2 quarts of boiling water over the mixture.

  6. Cook until tender and season with salt and pepper to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

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

  3. Okra + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together727 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Chicken + okratop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together320 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon
Renders fat for frying the onions and chicken, adding smoky flavor.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, building the base flavor of the soup.
Chicken
Provides the main protein, browning in the fat to add savory depth.
Okra
Releases a thickening starch into the liquid, giving the soup body.
Green peppers
Add a fresh, slightly bitter vegetable note to the soup.

The step that matters

Cook until tender. Simmering long enough lets the chicken and okra become tender and lets their flavors blend into the broth. Stopping early leaves the meat tough and the okra's starch underdeveloped.

Swap the okra

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Okrathe original

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