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Vegetable Sauce

A tomato and okra stew seasoned with butter, salt, and pepper, served with cold meat.

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

  1. Combine all ingredients in a stewpan with the butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Stew slowly until the vegetables are tender.

Serve

  1. Serve with cold meat.

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
Break down into the liquid base of the sauce as they soften.
Young okra
Thickens the sauce as it cooks and softens.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma as it softens in the stew.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stew slowly until the vegetables are tender. Gentle, slow heat lets the vegetables soften and release their pectin and juices evenly, while fast boiling can scorch the bottom of the pan and leave lumps of unbroken vegetable.

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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