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Stewed Okra

A simple stewed okra dish flavored with butter, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Stewed Okra

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the okra and remove the stem ends.

  2. Slice the pods crosswise into several pieces.

Cook

  1. Put the okra into an enamel-ware saucepan and cover with boiling water.

  2. Add ½ teaspoon salt and cook until tender, about 15 minutes.

  3. Drain the okra.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the butter and vinegar, along with salt and pepper to taste.

  2. Shake over the heat for a moment or two until hot.

  3. Serve.

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 + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together727 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Okra + vinegartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Young okra
Provides the main body of the dish and, when cooked, a soft, tender texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the cooked okra.
Vinegar
Adds a bright acidity that balances the mild, earthy flavour of the okra.

Swap the okra

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cabbagefits better
  4. Okrathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar, 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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