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Okra Salad

A salad of boiled okra, green pepper, horseradish, olive oil, tarragon vinegar, and fresh greens.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Okra and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 212 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Okra Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and boil the okra pods until tender, then drain and let cool.

  2. Slice the okra into pieces about ¼ inch thick.

  3. Rub a salad bowl with the garlic clove.

Assemble and serve

  1. Add the sliced okra, chopped green pepper, and grated horseradish to the bowl.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and white pepper.

  3. Drizzle with olive oil and a little tarragon vinegar.

  4. Gently mix the ingredients and serve on a curly lettuce leaf, garnished with watercress sprigs.

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 + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Garlic + olivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Horseradish + tarragontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together73 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Okra + horseradishtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6 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

Okra pods
Forms the main body of the salad, with a tender texture once boiled.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour across the salad.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the okra and balances the oil.
Freshly grated horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that gives the salad its bite.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (okra, clove, garlic, pepper, horseradish, olive, tarragon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against okra, clove, garlic, pepper, horseradish, olive, tarragon. 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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