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Tomatoes and Okra

A sautéed okra and tomato dish flavored with lard, salt, pepper, and cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Tomatoes and Okra

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the stems from the okra and cut into thin slices.

Cook

  1. Cook the okra gently in a pan until tender.

  2. Add lard, salt, and pepper to the okra.

  3. If the tomatoes are too thick, add cold water.

Finish

  1. Stir to combine and serve.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Okra
Its natural mucilage thickens the dish as it cooks and gives it body.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that brighten the flavor of the okra.
Lard
Adds fat that carries flavor and gives a rich mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Cook the okra gently until tender. Cutting okra and cooking it over high heat or for too long releases more of its mucilage, which makes the dish slimy. Gentle heat keeps the slices tender but firm.

Swap the okra

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Eggplantfits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Okrathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, 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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