Okra
Okra is a vegetable far richer in valuable albuminoids and life-giving nitrogen than many breads, and presenting these elements in the most readily assimilated form. The plant belongs to the Hibiscus family, and its esculent pods make an appetizing dish when properly cooked and seasoned. The best mode of cooking it is this: If the pods are very small and tender, stew them entire, or if large and somewhat tough, cut in rings and stew. Use a porcelain saucepan, as iron or tin darkens the vegetable and may prove injurious. Stew it in clear water salted and without grease of any kind. When well done, drain the water and stir in one whipped egg for every dozen small pods. Let this cook but a few seconds, stirring constantly; then add cream and butter according to quantity; and the merest dash of red pepper; dish up as soon as these are hot through and serve at once. The most fastidious appetite is tempted by this dainty dish, and weak digestion is often aided by it.
A plain stewed okra finished like a fricassee, with egg and cream stirred in off the heat. The instruction that matters most is the pan: okra's phenolics react with bare iron and darken the pods to a dull grey-green.
- The pan"Porcelain" here means a porcelain-enamelled iron saucepan, the period's answer to a nonreactive vessel. Enamel, stainless steel or glass all work; bare cast iron or unlined aluminium will discolour the okra. The claim that it is "injurious" is nineteenth-century caution rather than fact, but the colour change is real.
- Choosing the podsSmall tender pods stew whole; larger, tougher ones are cut into rings, as the original directs. The original gives no timing beyond "when well done." Cutting the pods releases more mucilage, though most of it goes off with the drained water here.
- Salted clear water, no greaseThe point of stewing in plain salted water is that the pods are drained afterwards and the sauce built from egg and cream alone. Use just enough water to cover; too much leaches flavour and dilutes nothing useful.
- The eggOne whipped egg per dozen small pods, which is a generous binding for the roughly 4 oz of okra a dozen small pods amounts to. The original has it cook only "but a few seconds" with constant stirring; over sustained heat it curdles quickly.
- Cream and butter "according to quantity"Unquantified in the original. Something on the order of 2 tablespoons of cream and 1 tablespoon of butter per dozen pods is a reasonable modern reading; heavy cream holds better against the egg than half-and-half.
- Red pepperCayenne. "The merest dash" means a pinch for the whole dish, not per serving.
- The nutrition claimOkra is not richer in protein than bread. It is about 2 percent protein by weight, mostly water, and useful chiefly for fibre, vitamin C and folate. Period albuminoid figures were derived from nitrogen content, which flatters a watery fresh vegetable when set against bread.
- YieldA dozen small pods with the egg and cream serves two as a side dish.
Okra came to the American South through the Atlantic slave trade from West Africa, and the word itself is generally traced to Igbo ọ́kụ̀rụ̀; the alternative name gumbo comes from a Bantu root, ki ngombo. The insistence on porcelain rather than iron or tin is a recurring theme in cookbooks of the period. The closing line about weak digestion reflects the era's interest in invalid cookery, where mucilaginous foods were prescribed as soothing to the stomach.