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Ochra Soup

A soup made with sliced okra, onions, water, beans, squash, meat, bacon, tomatoes, butter, and veal, served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Ochra Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and slice the okra thin.

  2. In a large pot, combine the okra, chopped onions, and water.

  3. Simmer the mixture steadily without boiling.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

Cook the soup

  1. At noon, add the lima beans.

  2. At 12:30 PM, add the squash, chicken or veal, boiled bacon or pork, and peeled tomatoes.

  3. When nearly done, thicken the soup with a mixture of butter and veal.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled rice.

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. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + tomatotop 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
Its natural mucilage thickens the broth and gives the soup its body.
Lima beans
Starchy beans soften into the broth, adding body and a mild, earthy flavor.
Tomatoes
Their acidity and juices add brightness and moisture to the broth.
Chicken or veal
Simmered slowly, it releases gelatin and savory flavor into the broth.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that rounds out the flavor of the thickened soup.

The step that matters

Simmer without boiling. A steady simmer extracts flavor gently and keeps the meat tender, while a hard boil can toughen proteins and make the broth cloudy.

Swap the lima beans

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against okra, onion, pepper, chicken, pork, tomato, butter. 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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