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Okra Soup

A hearty soup made with beef, okra, tomatoes, onions, and parsley, simmered for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and okra match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 206 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Okra Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large pot, combine the beef and water.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook for 6 hours.

  3. Add the onion, parsley, okra, and tomatoes.

  4. Continue boiling for an additional 2 hours.

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 + okratop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together206 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Okra + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 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

Beef
Gives the soup its rich meaty flavour, and the marrow adds body as it cooks down.
Okra
Releases a natural thickener during long simmering, giving the soup a silky body.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and sweetness that balance the rich beef and deepen the broth's flavour.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and sweetness as it softens into the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the okra and tomatoes after the long first simmer. Okra is delicate and can break down into a slimy texture if overcooked, while tomatoes add acidity that can toughen meat if added too early. Adding them after the beef has cooked for six hours keeps the broth flavourful and the vegetables pleasantly textured.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, okra, tomato. 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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