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Okra Soup

A hearty soup made with beef, okra, lima beans, tomatoes, onions, parsley, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Okra and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 206 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Okra Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, combine the meat and water. Season with coarse sea salt and bring to a boil.

  2. Reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour, skimming off any foam.

Add the vegetables

  1. Add the okra and cook for another hour.

  2. Stir in the Lima beans and cook for 1 more hour.

  3. Add the cymlings, tomatoes, onions, and parsley. Cook for 2 additional hours.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a small bowl, mix the butter and flour to create a paste. Stir this into the soup to thicken it.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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. Okra + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together234 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Okra
Releases starch and mucilage as it cooks, helping give the soup body.
Butter and flour
Flour thickens the soup into a smoother body, and butter carries it into the liquid as a paste.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the broth as they cook down.
Lima beans
Add starch that softens into the broth and thickens it slightly.

The step that matters

Stirring in the butter and flour paste. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps. Mixing it first into a smooth paste with butter lets it disperse evenly, so the soup thickens without lumps.

Swap the lima beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, okra, tomato, onion, parsley, butter, flour):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, okra, tomato, onion, parsley, butter, flour. 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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