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Okra Soup

A hearty soup made with tomatoes, okra, rice, onion, parsley, and beef or ham.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Okra Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the meat in a large pot with plenty of water and bring to a boil.

  2. Quarter the okra pods and cut them into half‑inch lengths, discarding the lower parts, then wash the okra quickly.

Make the soup

  1. Add the okra to the boiling meat.

  2. Cook for 2 hours.

  3. Peel the tomatoes and add them to the pot.

  4. Boil for 1½ hours.

  5. Add the rice, chopped onion, and parsley.

  6. Season with salt and pepper.

  7. Skim the okra occasionally while it cooks.

  8. Add boiling water if needed.

Serve

  1. Cook dry rice separately to serve with the 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Okra + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together206 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tomato + okratop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Onion + okratop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together715 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Okra + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together250 recipes

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

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 as it cooks.
Beef soup bone or ham
Releases savory flavor and gelatin into the broth as it simmers.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, rounding out the flavor of the broth.
Onion
Softens and adds aromatic sweetness to the broth.
Rice
Its starch adds some body and thickness to the soup.

The step that matters

Skim the pot as it cooks. Foam and scum rise from the meat and okra during simmering. Removing them regularly keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting instead of cloudy or bitter.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, beef, pepper, okra, rice, 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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