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Okra Soup

A beef broth with okra, tomatoes, onions, thyme, and seasonings simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Okra Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine the beef and water in a soup pot.

  2. Add a little salt and bring to a boil, skimming off any foam.

Simmer and serve

  1. Slice the okra and tomatoes, then add them to the pot along with the shredded onions.

  2. Add the thyme and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Reduce heat and let it simmer slowly for 6 hours, stirring occasionally.

  4. If the soup reduces too much, add more water half an hour before serving.

  5. Serve the soup in a tureen, discarding the beef and thyme.

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. Okra + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Okra + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together715 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shin or shoulder clod
Releases savory flavor into the broth during the long simmer, forming the base of the soup.
Okra
Releases natural thickening starch as it cooks, giving the soup body.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and sweetness, and their juices help build the soup's flavor.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aroma as they soften into the broth.

The step that matters

Long, gentle simmer. Keeping the heat low and the simmer slow lets the beef become tender and its flavor spread into the broth without the liquid boiling hard and reducing too fast.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, okra, tomato, thyme, 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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