Name: Okra Gumbo Soup
Ingredients: 3 quarts water; 1 cup lima beans; 1 quart okra; 1 onion; butter; salt; pepper; broth or tomato juice (optional)

Why it works: Lima beans and okra 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 Gumbo Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beef in the water for 1 hour.
Sauté the onion in butter for a few minutes.
Add the sautéed onion, okra (cut into half-inch pieces), and lima beans to the soup.
Stew slowly over low heat for 2 to 3 hours until thick.
If desired, thin the soup with broth or tomato juice.
Season with salt and pepper and serve hot.

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.

Lima beans + okratop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together64 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Okra + tomatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together327 recipes

Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).
Okra + oniontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together715 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,633 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

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lima beans, okra, onion, butter, pepper):

Chivefits about as well
Potatofits about as well
Capsicumfits about as well
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lima beans, okra, onion, butter, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.