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Okra Soup

Okra Soup is a hearty vegetable soup with okra, lima beans, tomatoes, onions, and meat, thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Okra and lima beans share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 64 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Okra Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil 1 gallon of water in a large pot.

  2. Add 4 handfuls of cut okra and cook for 30 minutes.

  3. Stir in 1 handful of lima beans, 3 cymblins, and a small piece of fresh meat or fowl.

  4. Before serving, add 5 sliced tomatoes and cook until well mixed.

  5. Thicken the soup with butter rolled in flour, but do not make it too thick.

  6. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  7. Use a wooden spoon to stir the soup in a stone vessel.

  8. Start cooking early to allow the soup to simmer.

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 + lima beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Okra + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together234 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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
Releases starchy mucilage that gives the soup body and a silky, slightly thick texture.
Lima beans
Add starch and body, making the soup heartier as they soften in the broth.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and fresh flavor, balancing the richness of the meat and okra.
Fresh meat or fowl
Contributes savory depth and richness to the broth as it simmers.
Butter and flour
Form a roux-style mixture that thickens the soup and adds richness.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with butter rolled in flour. Flour thickens only when it is cooked and dispersed evenly; added as a lump it stays raw and clumps. Keeping the thickening light matters because okra already adds considerable body, so too much flour makes the soup pasty.

Swap the lima beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (okra, onion, meat, tomato, butter, flour, pepper):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against okra, onion, meat, tomato, butter, flour, 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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