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Okra Soup

A hearty soup made with okra, corn, peppers, beans, tomatoes, and rice, simmered in a bone broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 bouillon

  1. Make the bouillon a day in advance.

  2. Place the soup bone in cold water and simmer slowly for several hours.

  3. Allow the bouillon to cool, then remove any grease.

Make the soup

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

  2. Stir in the pureed tomatoes and baking soda, then season with red and white pepper.

  3. Just before serving, add salt to taste.

  4. Serve the soup with boiled rice.

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
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it a viscous, body-rich texture.
Tomatoes
Add acidity, color and body to the soup once pureed into it.
Butter beans
Add starch and creaminess, helping the soup feel hearty.
Soup bone
Releases gelatin and flavor into the water during long simmering, forming the broth.
Baking soda
Raises the pH of the tomatoes, softening their acidity and deepening color.
Rice
Adds starch and bulk when served alongside the soup.

The step that matters

Remove the grease after cooling the bouillon. Fat that is not skimmed from the cooled bouillon will float on the soup and make it greasy. Chilling the broth lets the fat solidify on top so it lifts off cleanly.

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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