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Winter Okra Soup

A hearty soup made with tomatoes, ham, rice, okra, and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and okra 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 ↓

Winter Okra Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, fry the chopped onions and red pepper in butter until soft.

  2. Add the diced ham and rice, then stir in the can of tomatoes.

  3. Stew the mixture for 3 hours, stirring frequently.

  4. Add about 2 cups of boiling water to keep the soup from becoming too thick.

  5. Ten minutes before serving, add the okra and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, ensuring the soup is thicker than pea soup.

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

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Rice + okratop 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

Rice
Releases starch during long stewing, thickening the soup and giving it body.
Okra
Releases mucilage when heated, adding thickness and a silky texture to the soup.
Onions
Softened in butter, they build a sweet, savoury base for the soup.
Ham
Contributes savoury, salty flavour that carries through the long stew.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, blending into the stew to flavour the broth.

The step that matters

Stewing the rice and ham for 3 hours. Rice starch thickens the liquid only as it cooks slowly and stirs in; stirring often prevents sticking and scorching on the base of the pot, while added boiling water keeps the thickness from becoming too heavy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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