As reported by O. Henry's good friend and biographer C. Alphonso Smith, The Third Ingredient was inspired by a real experience: ... in one of his first months in New York he was living in very humble lodgings and one evening found him without funds.

The girl was a feather curler and, during the meal, she explained her work and showed him the peculiar kind of dull blade which was used in it.

Instead, the emphasis is on companionship: it may be argued that the "third ingredient" is heart (as it is literally in Smith's description above), which could explain the departure from tradition.

[citation needed] The story follows Hetty Pepper, a lower-class woman who has lost her job at a department store.

Bargaining with a rib of beef (her last bit of food) she befriends a neighbor and a love interest, who donate ingredients for a stew greater than the sum of its parts.