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Vegetable Sauce

A sauce made from tomatoes, okra, onion, butter, cayenne pepper, and salt, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Vegetable Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the okra finely.

  2. Skin the tomatoes and slice the onion.

Cook and season

  1. Stew all ingredients together slowly until tender.

  2. Season with butter, cayenne pepper, and salt.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body, moisture and acidity of the sauce.
Young okras
Contribute bulk and a thickening texture as they soften during stewing.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aromatic depth as it softens into the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to finish the sauce.

The step that matters

Stew slowly until tender. Slow stewing softens the okra and breaks down the tomatoes gradually, so the sauce thickens evenly. Rapid boiling can scorch the bottom and leave the okra with a slimy or uneven texture.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, okra, butter, 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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