Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Okra, Cocoanut

A chicken and vegetable soup with okra, coconut, and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turnip and okra share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chicken Okra, Cocoanut

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the chicken into small square pieces.

  2. Dice the carrot, turnip, onion, and green pepper into half-inch squares.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and brown the chicken and vegetables for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  2. Add the rice and any raw chicken bones, then moisten with hot water.

  3. Season with salt, cover, and boil for 30 minutes.

  4. Add the diced tomatoes and okras, then boil for another 30 minutes.

  5. Remove any bones from the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the milk and shredded coconut, then boil for 10 more minutes and serve.

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. Turnip + okratop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein and meaty flavour that the broth carries.
Okras
Release natural thickening starch that gives the soup a slightly silky body.
Coconut
Adds richness and body, with fat that softens the broth's flavour.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, rounding out the broth.
Raw rice
Releases starch during boiling, helping to thicken the soup.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and fresh flavour that brightens the broth.

The step that matters

Browning the chicken and vegetables. Browning in butter builds deeper flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale, steamed pieces make a flatter broth, so they should be coloured, not just softened.

Swap the turnip

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, carrot, onion, pepper, rice, tomato, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes