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Fried Okra with Tomatoes

A fried okra dish cooked with stewed tomatoes, butter, sugar, salt, and pepper, served over hot toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Fried Okra with Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the okra pods into thin slices.

Cook

  1. In a skillet, fry the okra in butter until brown.

  2. Add the stewed tomatoes and season with salt, pepper, and sugar.

  3. Simmer for a few minutes.

  4. Serve over hot toast.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Okra + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together727 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Okra
Its sliced pods brown in butter, giving the dish its main texture and body.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the okra and adds a rich, savory flavor.
Stewed tomatoes
Supply moisture and acidity that soften into a sauce as they simmer.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the acidity of the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Frying the okra until brown. Okra is slippery and can steam instead of browning if the pan is crowded or not hot enough. Browning in butter develops flavor, and the slices should be fried before the tomatoes are added so they keep some color and bite.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (okra, butter, pepper, sugar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against okra, butter, pepper, sugar. 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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