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Okra with Rice

A stew of okra, ham, tomatoes, and spices served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Okra and tomato 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 ↓

Okra with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the okra and cut it into slices.

  2. Cut the ham into dice and fry it until brown.

  3. Peel the tomatoes and cut them.

  4. Wash the rice.

Make the okra

  1. Place the tomatoes in a pot with the okra, ham, stock, red pepper, and sliced onion.

  2. Cover the pot and simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  3. Add salt, black pepper and sassafras leaves (gumbo filé) to the okra.

  4. Boil the okra mixture once.

Serve

  1. Boil the rice.

  2. Arrange the rice in a mound in the center of a dish.

  3. Pour the okra mixture around the 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 + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Okra + ricetop 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

Okra
Its slices release mucilage that thickens the stew-like liquid as it simmers.
Ham
Frying until brown adds savory, browned flavor that carries into the stew.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture, forming the base of the sauce with the stock.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the simmered liquid.
Rice
Forms a neutral starchy bed that soaks up the thickened okra sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer the okra gently with the lid on. Okra can turn slimy or lose its shape if overcooked or stirred harshly, and a gentle covered simmer keeps the pieces tender while the mucilage thickens the liquid evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Eggplantfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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