Okra Soup
To five cups of chicken, veal or beef broth, add one cupful and one-half cupful of okra cut in small pieces. Simmer until cooked, season to taste, serve. Half a cupful of cooked sweet corn and lima beans may be added if liked.
A plain broth soup that depends entirely on the quality of the stock and on not overcooking the okra. Two lines in the original hide one real decision and one ambiguous measurement.
- The ambiguous quantity"one cupful and one-half cupful of okra" most likely means one and a half cups in total. Read it that way for five cups of broth; if you want a thicker, stew-like soup, more okra does no harm.
- Okra and mucilageThis is the hinge. Sliced okra releases mucilage as it cooks, which is what thickens the soup and also what makes it slimy if handled badly. Steady simmering and acid both help: a squeeze of lemon or a spoonful of tomato at the end keeps the texture silky rather than ropy.
- How long is "until cooked"Fresh sliced okra is tender in 10 to 15 minutes in simmering broth. Beyond about 25 minutes it collapses into strings. Frozen cut okra works and needs closer to 8 to 10 minutes; do not thaw it first.
- BrothWith no aromatics, no fat and no thickening, the stock is the dish. Use a real homemade or good-quality chicken or beef stock; a cube dissolved in water leaves this soup thin and salty. Veal broth, the third option given, is now a specialty item and can be skipped.
- Season to tasteSalt and black pepper at minimum; cayenne is a common addition in okra cookery and suits the dish. A bay leaf and a little onion softened in butter before the broth goes in are within the spirit of the thing.
- Corn and limasThe optional half cupful of cooked sweet corn and lima beans (the original does not say whether that is half a cup of each or half a cup between them) turns this toward succotash-style soup. Both must go in already cooked, as written, and only for the last few minutes; canned or frozen are fine.
- YieldAbout five cups of finished soup, which is two generous bowls or four small first-course servings.
Okra came to the American South with the transatlantic slave trade from West Africa, where the plant and the technique of using it as a thickener were long established; the name itself is generally traced to Igbo okuru, while the alternative "gumbo" comes from Bantu words for the pod. By the time this book was compiled, okra soup was so thoroughly a Southern staple that Charleston and Savannah cooks published far more elaborate versions with beef shin, tomato and long simmering. What appears here is a much lighter broth course, without the tomato and the ham bone, set down as a short, uniform entry suited to a course-based dinner menu.