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Okra Sottp

A slow-cooked beef and okra soup with tomatoes, onions, thyme, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Okra Sottp

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine the beef, water, and a little salt in a soup pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and skim off any foam that rises to the surface.

  3. Add the sliced okra, tomatoes, shredded onions, thyme, salt, and pepper to the pot and reduce the heat.

  4. Let it boil slowly for 6 hours, stirring occasionally.

  5. If the mixture reduces too much, add more water half an hour before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve the soup in a tureen.

  2. Reserve the beef and thyme for later use.

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 + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shin or shoulder clod
Releases flavour and body into the broth during the long simmer.
Okra
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it a silky, slightly viscous texture.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and sweetness, and break down to enrich the broth.
Onions
Build savoury sweetness and aroma as they soften in the broth.

The step that matters

Slow boil for 6 hours. Keeping the pot at a gentle boil for a long time lets collagen in the beef break down into a richer broth. Too fierce a boil can cloud the soup and toughen the meat, so the heat should stay low and steady.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Eggplantfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, okra, tomato, thyme, 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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