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Soup

Winter Okra Soup

A hearty soup made with okra, tomatoes, onions, rice, oysters, and spices, simmered for hours.

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 ↓

Winter Okra Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the onions and fry them in the butter.

  2. Wash the rice well.

Stew the soup

  1. In a large pot, stew the onions, tomatoes, and red pepper in 3 quarts of water and 1 pint of oyster water for about 3 hours, stirring frequently.

Finish and serve

  1. Ten minutes before serving, add the okra and bring to a boil.

  2. Then drop in the oysters, boil once, and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Okra + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together250 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  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

Okra
Thickens the soup as it cooks and gives it its characteristic body.
Oysters
Add briny flavor and tender texture when cooked only briefly at the end.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the long-simmered broth.
Onions
Build a sweet, savory base through frying and long stewing.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the onions as they fry.

The step that matters

Adding the oysters. Oysters toughen and turn rubbery if overcooked. Dropping them in at the end and boiling only once cooks them just through while keeping them tender.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against okra, tomato, butter, oyster, rice, 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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