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Okra Soup with Crabs

A hearty soup of okra, veal, ham, and crab simmered with onions, tomatoes, and peppers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and okra match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 715 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Okra Soup with Crabs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Fry the onions in the drippings or butter until brown.

  2. Add the ham and veal to the onions and fry until browned.

  3. Slice the okra, discarding the stems, and add it to the pot.

  4. Pour in the boiling water, add the chopped pepper, and season with salt.

  5. Simmer the soup covered for 2 hours.

Add the crab and tomatoes

  1. Fry the crab meat with the sliced onion and butter until brown.

  2. Add the fried crab meat and sliced tomatoes to the soup after 2 hours.

  3. Simmer the soup covered for an additional 2 hours.

  4. If the soup has reduced, add boiling water to return it to 4 quarts.

Serve

  1. Remove any bones and unshredded meat, check seasoning, 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.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Crab + meattop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  3. Okra + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together727 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Okra + crabtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together33 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  5. Butter + crabtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Breaks down during long simmering to enrich the broth with body and flavor.
Okra
Releases starch as it cooks, thickening the soup and giving it body.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and sweetness, rounding out the broth's flavor.
Hard-shell crabs
Contribute sweet, savory crab flavor to the soup.
Onions
Browning them builds a sweet, deep savory foundation for the soup.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until brown. Browning onions in fat through the Maillard reaction and caramelization builds the deep savory base of the soup, so pale onions produce a flatter flavor.

Swap the okra

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, ham, veal, pepper, crab, meat):

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Okrathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, ham, veal, pepper, crab, meat. 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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