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Okra with Rice

A stew of okra, tomatoes, ham, and stock served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Okra with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the okra and cut it into slices.

  2. Cut the ham into dice and fry it until brown.

  3. Peel and cut the tomatoes, then place them in a pot with the okra, ham, stock, red pepper, and sliced onion.

Cook and serve

  1. Cover the pot and simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  2. While the okra is cooking, wash and boil the rice.

  3. Once the okra is done, arrange the rice in a mound in the center of a dish.

  4. Add salt, pepper, and sassafras to the okra, bring to a boil, and pour it around the rice.

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. Okra + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together715 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Okra + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together250 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

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

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

Okra
Its natural mucilage thickens the stock and gives the dish its body.
Ham
Frying until brown adds savory, smoky flavor to the cooking liquid.
Tomatoes
Their acidity and juice add moisture and a bright, tangy flavor to the stew.
Rice
Its starch soaks up the thickened okra liquid, giving a neutral base for the stew.
Onion
Softens during simmering and adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the base.

The step that matters

Simmer gently with the lid on. Gentle heat keeps the okra tender without breaking it down too far, and the covered pot holds in moisture so the stew thickens evenly rather than scorching or drying out.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Eggplantfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against okra, tomato, pepper, rice, ham. 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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