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Okra Fricasseed with Corn

A sautéed okra and corn dish flavored with onion, milk, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Okra and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 715 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Okra Fricasseed with Corn

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the vegetables

  1. Heat the drippings in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced okra and onion, and cook until nicely browned.

  3. Stir in the corn and cook for about 10 minutes until thoroughly cooked.

  4. Drain the contents of the pan to one side.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the flour to the fat and mix well.

  2. Gradually add the milk, stirring continually until boiling.

Season and serve

  1. Season with salt and black pepper, then serve very hot.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Okra + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together161 recipes

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

  3. Okra + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together234 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Okra + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together727 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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 and gives it a soft, tender texture.
Corn
Adds sweetness and a tender bite as it cooks through the dish.
Drippings
Fat that carries flavor and helps the okra and onion brown.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with the fat.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that, heated with the flour, becomes a creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the milk gradually while stirring. Flour clumps if liquid is added too quickly. Adding the milk slowly and stirring constantly lets the starch disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly as it heats to boiling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (okra, corn, flour, milk, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against okra, corn, flour, milk, 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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