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Soup Recipes

A hearty vegetable soup made with tomatoes, okra, potatoes, corn, onions, and turnips, simmered slowly over several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Okra and turnip share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Soup Recipes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large pot, bring water to a boil and cook for 4 hours.

  2. Two hours before the soup is done, add the peeled tomatoes.

  3. One hour before serving, add the sliced okra.

  4. Half an hour before serving, add the sliced Irish potatoes and tender corn.

  5. If desired, add sliced onions one hour before the soup is done.

  6. If using turnips, add them as soon as the water becomes 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.

  1. Okra + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Potato + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Peeled tomatoes
Break down over the long simmer to build the soup's body and tomato flavor.
Okra
Releases starch as it cooks, adding body and thickening the broth.
Irish potatoes
Soften and thicken the broth slightly while holding their shape in the soup.
Tender corn
Adds sweetness and tender texture that stays intact with a short cook time.

The step that matters

Adding the vegetables in timed stages. Vegetables cook at different rates. Adding them at the listed times keeps quick-cooking corn and potatoes tender while the long-cooking tomatoes and okra break down into the broth.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, okra, potato, corn, turnip):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, okra, potato, corn, turnip. 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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