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Salad

Okra Salad

A salad of blanched okra, endive, and French dressing with chives and chervil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Chive and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 370 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Okra Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the okra in boiling water for 3 minutes.

  2. Drain and quarter the okra.

Assemble and dress

  1. Shred the endive and place it on a serving plate.

  2. Arrange the quartered okra on top of the endive.

  3. In a bowl, mix the French dressing with the chopped chives and chervil.

  4. Pour the dressing over the okra salad.

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. Chive + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Endive + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Endive + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together61 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Okra + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Okra + endivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8 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
Blanching softens the pods slightly while keeping them crisp enough to hold their shape in the salad.
Endive
Its crisp, bitter leaves give the salad a fresh texture and a contrast to the mild okra.
French dressing
Its oil and acid coat the vegetables, adding moisture, fat and tang.
Chives
Their mild onion flavor adds aroma and a fresh sharpness to the dressing.
Chervil
Its delicate anise-like aroma adds a light herbal note to the dressing.

The step that matters

Blanch the okra in boiling water for 3 minutes. Blanching in rapidly boiling water briefly cooks the okra and sets its color and texture. Over-blanching makes the pods soft and slimy, while under-blanching leaves them raw and fibrous, so timing matters.

Swap the okra

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (endive, chive, chervil):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Okrathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against endive, chive, chervil. 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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