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Okra Fricasseed with Corn
Cut one pint of okra into slices. Put two tablespoonfuls of drippings in a frying-pan, put in the okra with one slice of onion and turn till nicely browned, then add one dozen ears of corn scored and pressed out. Stir the corn and watch carefully until thoroughly cooked, about ten minutes. Then drain the contents of the pan to one side. Add to the fat in the pan two tablespoonfuls of flour, mix, add a half pint of milk, stir continually until boiling, add a level teaspoonful of salt and a dash of black pepper. Serve very hot.
A skillet succotash in all but name, built on a browned roux at the end rather than the beginning. The proportions in the original are lopsided by modern reading, so measure by volume rather than by the counts given.
- A pint of okraThe pint is a volume measure, not a weight, and it is unclear whether the original means before or after slicing; either way it is roughly half a pound to three-quarters of a pound of pods, perhaps twenty medium ones. Cut them into thin coins.
- A dozen ears is a lotTwelve ears give something on the order of six to nine cups of pulp and kernels, which will swamp a single frying-pan alongside the okra. Six to eight ears gives a better balance; if you want the full dozen, use a wide 12-inch skillet or work in two pans.
- Scored and pressed outRun a knife tip down the centre of each row of kernels, then press the pulp and milk out with the back of the blade, leaving the tough hulls on the cob. This gives a creamy mash rather than whole kernels, and it is what makes the dish hold together.
- DrippingsBacon fat or roast-meat drippings, and they carry most of the seasoning. Two tablespoons is right for the fat content of the sauce that follows; butter or oil works but the result is flatter.
- Brown the okra properlyThis is the hinge. Okra turns ropy when it is stewed wet and slack; frying it in hot fat until the cut faces are browned drives off moisture and keeps the finished dish cleaner-textured. Do not crowd the pan; the original says only to turn it until browned.
- Ten minutes for the cornReasonable for the starchier sweet-corn varieties of the period. Modern sweet corn pressed from the cob is cooked through in four or five minutes; go longer only if you want the starch to thicken.
- The saucePushing the vegetables aside and making a small roux in the same fat is a period shortcut for a béchamel. Half a pint is one cup of milk; cook the flour in the fat for a minute before adding it or the sauce tastes raw.
- YieldProbably six or more as a side dish, fewer if it is the centre of a summer supper; with the full dozen ears it will stretch further. It is unlikely to reheat well, as the okra softens.
"Fricassee" in nineteenth-century American cookbooks had drifted well away from its French sense of a white braise of chicken, and was applied loosely to anything cut up, cooked in fat, and finished in a sauce, which is exactly what happens here. The pairing of okra and corn belongs to the American South, where okra arrived through the transatlantic slave trade from West Africa and settled into the same summer garden as corn, tomatoes and beans; versions of the combination appear as succotash, as gumbo, and as plain skillet cooking depending on the household. What marks this particular version is the finish: instead of tomato or pot liquor, it takes a milk-and-flour sauce of the sort often associated with the cooking schools of the period, where a white sauce was the standard answer to almost any vegetable.