Skip to main content
Main

Gumbo Soup

A tomato and okra-based soup with bacon, onion, parsley, and hot broth, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Render the fat from the bacon in a stew kettle.

  2. Drain off the fat and fry the sliced onion until brown.

  3. Peel and chop the tomatoes, and slice the okra.

Simmer

  1. Add the tomatoes, okra, and parsley to the kettle.

  2. Pour in the hot broth and let it cook slowly for 3 hours.

  3. Season with salt and pepper 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Bacon
Its rendered fat carries smoky, savory flavor through the pot.
Onion
Browning it adds sweetness and deep aroma through the Maillard reaction.
Tomatoes
They add acidity, body and moisture that blend into the broth.
Okra
Its natural mucilage thickens the gumbo as it cooks slowly.
Broth
It forms the cooking liquid that carries and melds all the other ingredients.

The step that matters

Frying the onion until brown. Browning drives the Maillard reaction, which builds the savory, sweet base flavor of the gumbo. Stopping too early leaves it flat, while burning it makes the whole pot taste bitter.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Eggplantfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, okra, parsley, 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.

More gumbo recipes

Chicken 45Soup 37Okra 30Oyster 21Crab 8French 8 See all 76 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes