Name: Beef Soup with Vegetables
Ingredients: 1 shank of beef or 10-cent soup bone; 3 quarts cold water; 1 quart okra, minced; 1 pint tomatoes, minced; corn and butter beans, to taste; 2 Irish potatoes, diced; salt, to taste; pepper, to taste; 1 tablespoon walnut catsup or Worcestershire sauce

Why it works: Okra and beans share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 66 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Beef Soup with Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

Crack the bone in several places and place it in a pot with cold water.
Set the pot on the back of the stove and let it come slowly to a simmer.

Simmer the soup

At 9 or 10 o'clock, add the minced okra and tomatoes to the pot.
Add corn and butter beans if desired.
Dice the Irish potatoes and add them to the soup.
Let everything simmer slowly until dinner time.

Season and serve

Before serving, season with salt, pepper, and catsup or sauce.

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.

Okra + beanstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together66 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Tomato + beanstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,713 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Corn + beanstop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,211 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Okra + tomatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together327 recipes

Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).
Corn + potatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together938 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shank or soup bone: Releases flavor and body into the broth as it simmers slowly.
Okra: Thickens the broth as it cooks down during the long simmer.
Tomatoes: Adds acidity and savory depth that brightens the broth.
Irish potatoes: Add starch and body, becoming tender in the simmering broth.
Butter beans: Add creamy texture and body to the soup.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly from the start. Bringing the pot up to a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil keeps the broth clear and lets collagen and flavor from the bone extract slowly, giving a richer soup.

Swap the okra

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

Capsicumfits better
Carrotfits about as well
Asparagusfits about as well
Okrathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, tomato, corn, butter, beans, potato, 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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Corn Fritters203 recipes

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Beef Soup with Vegetables