Skip to main content
Main

Okra Soup

A hearty beef soup with okra, tomatoes, onion, and optional corn.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, boil the beef in 3 quarts of water until tender, skimming off any foam.

  2. Cut the beef into small pieces and return it to the pot.

Simmer the soup

  1. Add the chopped okra, chopped tomatoes, and finely chopped onion.

  2. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  3. Simmer the soup slowly for 3 hours.

  4. For added flavor, stir in grated corn if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tomato + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Okra + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together161 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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 shank bone or beef
Cooked until tender to give the soup its meaty body and savory flavor.
Okra
Releases mucilage during long simmering, thickening the soup and giving it a silky texture.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, rounding out the broth's flavor.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth as it softens in the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam while the beef boils. Foam contains impurities and proteins that can cloud the broth and taste bitter; removing it early keeps the soup clear and clean-flavored.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

More okra soup recipes

Beef 7 See all 84 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes