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Salad

Okra Salad

A chilled salad of blanched okra, seasoned with salt, pepper, vinegar, olive oil, served on endive with chives and chervil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 and drain the okra.

Dress and serve

  1. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Moisten with vinegar and olive oil.

  3. Serve on a bed of shredded endive.

  4. Garnish with chopped chives and chervil.

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
Forms the main body of the salad, with a tender texture after blanching.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour across the okra.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the salad and balances the oil.
Endive
Provides a crisp, slightly bitter base that contrasts with the okra.

The step that matters

Blanch and drain the okra. Blanching briefly in salted boiling water sets the okra's colour and softens its texture while keeping it bright green. Overcooking makes it slimy and dull, and thorough draining keeps the dressing from being diluted.

Swap the okra

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

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Beetrootfits about as well
  4. Okrathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, vinegar, olive, 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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