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Winter Okra Soup

A soup made with tomatoes, red pepper, onions, butter, rice, ham, okra, and water.

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

Winter Okra Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a pot and fry the chopped onions and red pepper until soft.

  2. Add the tomatoes, ham, and rice to the pot and stir well.

  3. Stew the mixture for 3 hours, stirring frequently.

  4. Add 2 cups of boiling water to keep the soup from becoming too thick.

  5. Ten minutes before serving, add the okra and bring to a boil.

  6. Serve the soup thick, similar to Pease Soup.

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. Rice + okratop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together250 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  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

Rice
Thickens the soup as it stews, giving it a hearty, body-rich texture.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, forming the flavor base of the soup.
Ham
Adds savory, salty flavor and richness to the broth.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, building the soup's base flavor.
Okra
Adds its own vegetable flavor and thickening texture when added near the end.

The step that matters

Stirring during the 3-hour stew. Rice and starch settle and scorch on the bottom of the pot during long simmering. Frequent stirring keeps the mixture from sticking and burning, and distributes heat evenly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, butter, rice, ham, 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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