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Okra Soup

A hearty soup made with beef, okra, tomatoes, rice, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Okra and tomato work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 327 recipes. Both carry damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Okra Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the okra

  1. Cut the okra into thin slices.

  2. Boil the sliced okra for a few minutes.

Make and season the soup

  1. Pour off the water and add the okra to the soup.

  2. In a large pot, combine water, beef, tomatoes, and rice.

  3. Boil the mixture for four hours.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and cloves to taste.

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 + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Supplies the meat and savory flavor as it simmers slowly in the broth.
Okra
Its natural mucilage thickens the soup as it cooks.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, giving the soup a fuller flavor.
Rice
Releases starch during the long simmer, helping to thicken the soup.

The step that matters

Boiling the mixture for four hours. A long, steady simmer is needed to make the beef tender and let the rice and okra release their starch and mucilage, which thicken the soup. Stopping early leaves tough meat and a thin broth.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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