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Okra Soup

A hearty soup made with ham, veal, onions, peppers, okra, corn, lima beans, and bones.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

  1. In a saucepan, brown the diced ham, veal, onion, and green pepper in butter for 10 minutes without burning.

  2. Add water and tomato juice, then season with salt and pepper.

  3. Add the veal bones and boil slowly for 30 minutes.

  4. Add the okra and boil until tender, about 25 minutes.

  5. Stir in the corn and lima beans and cook for a few more minutes.

  6. Remove the bones and skim off the fat.

  7. 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. 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. Tomato + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Okra + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together161 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Pepper + tomatotop 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 broth as it cooks, giving the soup its characteristic body.
Veal bones
Release gelatin and flavor into the water during slow boiling, enriching the broth.
Butter
Browns the ham, veal, onion, and pepper, building savory flavor at the start.
Tomato juice
Adds acidity and color, balancing the richness of the meat and bones.

The step that matters

Brown the ham, veal, onion, and green pepper in butter. Browning develops deep savory flavor through the Maillard reaction. Burning gives bitter, acrid notes that carry into the whole soup, so keep the heat moderate and stir often.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, veal, pepper, butter, tomato, okra, corn):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, veal, pepper, butter, tomato, okra, corn. 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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