Name: Okra and Tomato
Ingredients: 3 young, tender okra pods; ripe tomatoes (enough to make 1/3 the volume of sliced okra); 1-2 green peppers; butter; coarse sea salt

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 and Tomato

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Slice the okra pods crosswise.
Peel and slice the tomatoes.
Slice the green peppers.

Cook and serve

Stew the okra, tomatoes, and green peppers together.
When cooked, season with butter and coarse sea salt.
Serve 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.

Okra + tomatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together327 recipes

Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Okra + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together727 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,918 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Okra: Provides the main body and tender texture of the stew.
Tomatoes: Add moisture and acidity that combine with the vegetables to form the stew's liquid.
Green peppers: Add a fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavour and some bulk to the stew.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, rounding out the flavour at the end of cooking.