Name: Boiled Okra
Ingredients: young and tender pods of long white okra; salt; butter; pepper; vinegar

Why it works: Okra and pepper work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 727 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Okra

Ingredients

Directions

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil.
Add the okra pods and boil for 15 minutes.
Remove the stems and serve with butter, pepper, and vinegar if desired.

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 + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together727 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Okra + vinegartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together97 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,513 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).