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Gumbo Soup Made with Canned Gumbo

A hearty soup made with ham, chicken, canned tomatoes, and canned gumbo, simmered with spices and finished with ketchup and Worcestershire sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Gumbo Soup Made with Canned Gumbo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Fry the ham in an iron kettle until well done, then remove it.

  2. Fry the chicken pieces in the fat until browned and cooked through, then remove the breast and set aside.

  3. Pour 3 pints of water over the chicken and let it simmer for 2 hours.

  4. Add the can of tomatoes, bay leaves, cloves, peppercorns, cinnamon, and onion to the pot.

  5. Stew the mixture until tender.

  6. Strain the mixture through a puree sieve.

  7. Combine the strained tomato mixture with the chicken soup.

Make the roux and finish

  1. In another kettle, melt the butter.

  2. Mix in the flour to make a roux.

  3. Add the tomato broth to the roux and boil for 2-3 minutes.

  4. Cut the chicken breast into small pieces.

  5. Add the cut chicken breast and the can of gumbo to the soup.

  6. Season the soup with salt and pepper to taste.

  7. Finish the soup with ketchup and Worcestershire sauce.

  8. Optionally, add chopped olives before serving.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the meat and flavour base for the soup, and the breast is added back in pieces.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the broth, giving it its tomato flavour.
Butter
Fat that combines with flour to form the roux, which thickens the soup.
Flour
Starch that thickens the tomato broth when cooked into the butter roux.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury depth to the simmered broth.

The step that matters

Cooking the roux. Flour must be cooked in the melted butter until it loses its raw taste before the broth is added. Adding liquid too early leaves lumps and a pasty flavour, and the roux thickens the soup only when it is smooth.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, chicken, clove, cinnamon, onion, butter, flour):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, chicken, clove, cinnamon, onion, butter, 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.

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