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Okra Soup (Put pounds soup meat in quarts)
Put 2 pounds soup meat in 2 quarts cold water; when it comes to a boil, skim, and put in 1/4 peck okra, 4 good-sized tomatoes, 1 onion, 2 pieces celery, 2 tablespoonfuls chopped parsley, and 3 tablespoonfuls rice; the vegetables should be chopped fine; cook all together for four hours; an hour before serving add 1/2 pint lima beans; and fifteen minutes before serving, 3 ears of corn cut from cob; last of all, the chopped parsley. A good soup may be made without the celery, corn, and beans.
A long-simmered summer vegetable soup on a beef base, of the sort cooked all afternoon on a coal range. Everything in it is still available; the measurements are the part that needs translating.
- A quarter peck of okraA peck is 8 dry quarts, so a quarter peck is 2 quarts of pods — roughly 1 1/2 to 2 lb trimmed. That is a generous amount, and it is what thickens the soup; okra releases its mucilage over long cooking, which is the point here rather than a fault.
- Soup meatBeef shin, shank or chuck with the bone in. The bone matters more than the trim: it is what gives the 2 quarts of water any body. Ask for it cut into 2-inch pieces.
- Half a pint of lima beansA liquid half-pint is one cup of shelled beans, fresh or frozen. Frozen limas need far less than the hour specified — 20 to 25 minutes is enough, or they collapse.
- Water levelTwo quarts will not survive four hours of open simmering. Keep the pot barely at a tremble, lid ajar, and add hot water as needed to keep the meat covered. A hard boil will cloud the broth and toughen the beef.
- Corn timingFifteen minutes is right for corn cut from the cob and generous by modern standards; ten is plenty for tender supermarket sweet corn. Scrape the cobs into the pot for the milky liquid.
- Pot materialUse stainless steel or enamelled cast iron. Bare cast iron and aluminium can react with okra and tomato and darken the soup.
- Parsley twiceThe recipe adds chopped parsley early with the vegetables and again "last of all." Both are useful: the first cooks into the broth, the second is for freshness. Reserve about half of your 2 tablespoons for the end.
- YieldRoughly 3 quarts finished, enough for six to eight as a first course or four to five as a meal. It thickens on standing and may want thinning with stock when reheated.