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Beef Stew with Okra

A hearty stew of beef, onions, tomatoes, corn, and okra simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and okra 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 ↓

Beef Stew with Okra

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Leave the beef in one solid piece, preferably a chunky cut from the cross-rib, horseshoe, or sirloin-butt.

  2. Place the beef in a pot over moderate heat and cover with enough water.

Stew

  1. Add the tomatoes, okra, onions, corn, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add the butter and stew gently for 3 to 4 hours until the meat is tender and the vegetables form a thick purée.

Serve

  1. Serve the beef in the center with the vegetables arranged around it.

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. Tomato + okratop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Onion + okratop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together715 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tomato + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Corn + okratop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together161 recipes

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

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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

Lean beef
Provides the meat that becomes tender during the long, gentle stew.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture, breaking down into the thick sauce.
Okra
Its natural starch helps thicken the stew into a purée.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aroma as they soften into the base.
Corn
Adds sweetness and body to the vegetable purée.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, rounding out the flavor of the stew.

The step that matters

Stewing gently for 3 to 4 hours. Low, slow heat lets the connective tissue in the beef break down into gelatin, making the meat tender. A hard boil can toughen the meat and scorch the vegetables on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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