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Okra Broth
Place in a saucepan two ounces raw ham cut in small pieces, two ounces raw lean veal, two ounces of raw lean beef, one pound clean, raw, cracked chicken bones, slice half a green pepper, one carrot, one white onion, two leeks and twenty-four fresh, sound okras. Moisten with four quarts water. Season with one and a half teaspoons salt, gently boil two and a half hours, skimming off scum once in a while, then strain it through a damp double cheesecloth into six cups and serve either hot or cold.
A clear meat broth built on okra rather than thickened with it — closer to a consommé than to gumbo. Two details govern the result: the long slow reduction from four quarts down to six cups, and straining hard enough to leave the okra's mucilage behind.
- Okra by weightTwenty-four small, firm pods come to roughly half a pound (250 g). Buy pods no longer than about 3 inches; large ones are woody and will not give up their flavour before they turn to fibre.
- "Raw ham"This means uncooked ham — fresh pork leg, or an uncooked dry-cured ham such as prosciutto. It does not mean the pink cooked ham of the deli counter, which would add salt and cure flavour without contributing gelatine.
- Cracked chicken bonesA pound of backs, wings and necks, chopped through with a cleaver so the marrow is exposed. A butcher will crack a carcass for you; the broken bone is what gives the broth body.
- Gentle boil, not a rolling one"Gently boil" here means a bare simmer with the surface barely trembling. A hard boil emulsifies the fat and the okra pectin into the liquid and the broth will never clear.
- The mucilageOkra releases a soluble gum that makes the broth faintly viscous. Straining through damp double cheesecloth without pressing on the solids is what keeps it from being ropy — do not force the vegetables through.
- Reduction and yieldFour quarts (16 cups) down to six cups is a reduction of well over half in two and a half hours. Use a wide pan and expect to top up with a little water if it falls short, or simply accept a shorter yield of a stronger broth. Six cups serves six as a first course.
- SaltA teaspoon and a half in four quarts is deliberately light, since the liquid will reduce to a third. Taste and finish the seasoning after straining, not before.
- LeeksSplit them lengthwise and wash between the layers; grit that goes in at the start will still be in the pot at the end, below the level of the skimmer.
- Serving coldWith a pound of cracked bones behind it, the strained broth may set to a light jelly in the refrigerator.
The International Cook Book (1906) is credited to Alexander Filippini, long a chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it sets dishes gathered from immigrant and colonial cookery beside the French repertoire he had trained in. Okra came to the Americas from West Africa, carried in the transatlantic slave trade, and by the nineteenth century it was a fixture of Louisiana and Lowcountry cooking — the word gumbo is generally traced to Bantu terms for the pod, such as ngombo. What is interesting about this entry is the treatment: instead of using okra as a thickener, as gumbo does, Filippini treats it as a flavouring vegetable in a classic three-meat consommé, strains the body out, and offers it hot or in jelly. It is a hotel kitchen translating a Southern staple into the grammar of French clear soups, and the cold service points to the era's fondness for jellied consommé in summer.