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Creamed Okra on Toast
To cook the okra pods put them in boiling water, using one teaspoon of salt to a quart of water; add one tablespoon of lemon juice to the water also. Cook about one-half hour or until the okra is tender. Drain the water from the okra, reserving one cup of it for the sauce. Prepare the sauce as follows: 1 cup water from the okra 1/2 cup cream 1 teaspoon salt 1/4 cup milk 1/4 cup strained tomatoes 2 tablespoons flour 2 tablespoons butter Heat the okra water, the cream and milk in a double boiler. Rub the flour and butter together, and pour over it a little of the heated liquid, stirring meanwhile. When mixed thin enough to pour, turn this back into the remainder of the hot liquid. Set in a double boiler, and stir until thickened. Add the salt and strained tomato just before serving. Place three or four of the okra pods on a nicely toasted slice of bread for each serving, and over this pour a spoonful or more of the prepared sauce.
A simple white sauce built on okra cooking liquid, thinned with cream and finished with tomato. Two things in the original need adjusting: the boiling time and the point at which the tomato goes in.
- Cut the okra time hardHalf an hour of boiling leaves whole pods collapsed and slimy. Small to medium pods are tender in 8 to 12 minutes; test with the tip of a knife at eight and drain the moment they yield. Reserve the cup of cooking water as directed.
- Why the lemon juice is thereAcid firms the pods and keeps the mucilage from stringing out into the water. Vinegar works the same way, about a tablespoon per quart. Keep the pods whole and uncut for the same reason — cut okra releases far more mucilage.
- Strained tomatoesThis means fresh or canned tomatoes cooked down and pushed through a sieve to remove skin and seeds. Passata or plain tomato purée is the direct modern substitute; use about a quarter cup and nothing seasoned or garlicked.
- Tomato goes in last, off the heatThe hinge of the recipe. Acid stirred into hot cream will curdle it, so add the tomato at the last moment before serving and do not let the sauce boil afterward.
- The rouxTwo tablespoons each of butter and flour rubbed cold into a paste is a beurre manie rather than a cooked roux. Tempering it with hot liquid before returning it to the pan, as written, prevents lumps; over a double boiler it will take several minutes of stirring to thicken.
- SaltA full teaspoon in roughly two cups of finished sauce is on the heavy side, especially since the okra water is already salted. Start with a half teaspoon and taste.
- Double boilerUseful here because the sauce contains cream and will scorch on direct heat. A heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water does the same job; a heavy saucepan on low heat works if you stir steadily.
- YieldThe sauce is enough for about four servings of three or four pods each, so roughly half a pound of okra and four slices of toast. Cut the toast thick and dry it well or the sauce will soak through.
Meatless Cookery is a 1914 volume, argued largely on health and diet grounds, from a period when cooks needed a repertoire of dishes that could carry a meal without a joint or a chop. Creamed vegetables on toast were the workhorse solution: a white sauce supplied the richness, and the toast supplied the bulk that meat would otherwise have provided. Okra itself came to American cooking through the Atlantic slave trade from West Africa — the word is generally traced to Igbo ọ́kụ̀rụ̀ — and by 1900 it was firmly established in Southern kitchens, though usually stewed with tomatoes or thickening a gumbo rather than served whole under cream. Adding strained tomato to the sauce here is a nod to that older pairing of tomato and okra.