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Ochra Soup

A slow‑cooked beef and okra soup flavored with onion, salt, pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Okra and parsley 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 ↓

Ochra Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the beef in water for 6 hours or until thoroughly cooked.

  2. Strain the broth and season with salt, white pepper, and chopped onion.

Cook and finish

  1. In a saucepan, boil the okra and tomatoes for 2 to 3 hours, stirring constantly with a large wooden spoon.

  2. Pour the okra and tomato mixture into the soup and add chopped parsley.

  3. Simmer for an additional 2 to 3 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. Okra + parsleytop 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

Okra
Its natural thickeners release mucilage during long cooking, giving the soup body and a silky texture.
Tomatoes
Add acidity, moisture and body, and their sugars deepen flavour as they cook down.
Shin beef
Long simmering breaks down connective tissue, enriching the broth with gelatin and savoury flavour.
White onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury depth to the broth as it steeps.

The step that matters

Stirring the okra and tomatoes constantly. Okra and tomatoes thicken and can scorch on the bottom of the pan over a long cook. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly and keeps the mixture from burning before it is added to the broth.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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