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Okra Soup

A soup made with chicken, onions, bacon, tomatoes, okra, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and okra 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. Fry the chicken, onions, and bacon in a skillet until cooked.

  2. Pour water into the skillet and transfer everything to a pot, filling it two-thirds full.

  3. Add the tomatoes and let the mixture cook.

  4. Once the chicken has boiled enough to remove the bones, strain the soup through a colander.

Add the okra and finish

  1. In a separate saucepan, cook the okra until tender.

  2. Return the chicken meat, tomatoes, and bacon to the pot.

  3. Add the cooked okra and bring the soup back to a boil.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt 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. Tomato + okratop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provides the meat and the flavorful broth that forms the base of the soup.
Okra
Its natural mucilage thickens the soup and gives it a silky body.
Tomatoes
Adds acidity and body, rounding out the savory broth with a bright note.
Bacon
Adds smoky, salty fat that deepens the flavor of the broth.
Onions
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth as they cook down into the base.

The step that matters

Cooking the okra separately until tender. Okra cooked too long in the soup can turn slimy and dull, while undercooked okra stays fibrous. Cooking it separately lets you control its texture before it joins the broth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Eggplantfits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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