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Okra Soup

A hearty soup made with okra, onion, corn, green peppers, butter beans, tomatoes, and rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

Okra Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. The day before, place the soup bone in a pot with cold water and boil slowly for several hours.

  2. Remove from heat and let cool to remove grease.

Make the soup

  1. When ready to use, add okra, onion, corn, green peppers, and butter beans to the bouillon and cook until thick.

  2. Stir in the pureed tomatoes and a pinch of baking soda.

  3. Season with red and white pepper and salt to taste just before serving.

  4. Serve with boiled rice added to the 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. Okra + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together66 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Corn + beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Okra
Releases starch and mucilage that thicken the soup as it cooks.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, giving the soup its colour and tang.
Butter beans
Add starch and soft texture, helping the soup hold together.
Rice
Adds bulk and soaks up liquid, making the soup more filling.
Soup bone
Slow boiling extracts flavour and gelatin into the broth.

The step that matters

Cooling the broth to remove grease. Fat rises and solidifies as the broth cools, so it can be lifted off cleanly. Skipping the cooling leaves a greasy soup, since fat stays dispersed in warm liquid.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against okra, onion, corn, pepper, butter, beans, tomato. 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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