I've only just begun to read Judith Carney and Richard Nicholas Rosomoff's new work, "In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa's Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World." I love Carney's work on the African influence on rice-growing in South Carolina, "Black Rice," and wanted to know what new information she'd unearthed. I turned to the index and searched for okra. No plant more than this small green pod tells the history of Africans in diaspora, and the love/hate relationship that most of the country has with it is evidence of its history.
In the South, where enslavement lasted longer and climate made Africans and their descendants most at home, it is revered and treated with the respect it so richly deserves. It becomes the thickener in the okra soups and pilaus of the Carolina Lowcountry and is served up crisp and fried in parts of Mississippi. It's an ingredient in the Southern succotashes of many states and reigns supreme in many of the gumbos of New Orleans and southern Louisiana. Southerners just seem to know (or perhaps have learned from African-Americans) how to savor the slippery juice that the tender pods exude when they are cut.
Wherever okra points its green tip, Africa has been, and the trail of trade evidenced by the presence of the pod is formidable. It turns up in the cooking of North Africa and the Middle East, where it is known as Bamia or bamya. It makes a savored curried in India, where it is called bhindi in Hindu. It is known as lady's fingers by those of more colonial persuasion. It's known as jiao dou in Chinese and kacang bendi in Malay. Spain takes its word for the pod from the Bantu languages of Central Africa and calls it quingombo or ginbombo, and the Brazilian variant quiabo seems to derive from the same origins. Our American use of the word okra comes from the Igbo language of Nigeria, where the plant is referred to as okuru. It is the French word for okra that takes us to the heart of the matter in Louisiana, because it also harks back to the Bantu languages, but simply uses the final two syllables calling the mucilaginous pod gombo.
Okra's origin
Botanists debate okra's place of origin. Wild okra has been found in the Upper Nile Valley, and it has clearly been cultivated in Egypt for centuries, yet there seem to be no representations of it in Egyptian tomb paintings, and texts citing it go back only to the 13th century when it first appears in a letter written by a traveler from Moorish Spain in Egypt in 1216. Carney and Rosomoff assign its origin to the West African Savanna-Forest ecotone.
Okra probably was introduced to the continental United States via Louisiana, possibly brought there from either Africa or the Caribbean by the French. By 1748, it was being used in Philadelphia. In 1781, Thomas Jefferson commented on it as growing in Virginia, and it was certainly grown in the slave gardens of Monticello. By 1806, the vegetable was in relatively widespread use in the United States and botanists spoke of several varieties of the plant. The 1824 edition of "Virginia Housewife" by Mary Randolph included several okra recipes including "Gumbs: A West India Dish," which is a boiled okra dish.
Okra comes to America
Okra is one of the plants indigenous to the African continent that was brought over to feed the enslaved Africans. No doubt it was a hit as it recalled a generalized African taste for the mucilaginous that also is found throughout the continent in the use of "slippery" vegetables such as melloukiah (a leafy green that is cooked into a slick stew and savored in Egypt and northern Africa) and in the creolized world in the use of the prickly and slimy Brazilian vegetable known as xilo. 
One of the reasons for the popularity of the vegetable is that it not only can be used fresh when young and tender, but also can be dried and preserved for future use. It is relatively high in nutritional value and rich in calcium, phosphorus, potassium and iron. (Who knew!) It is easy to digest, possesses mild laxative properties and has emollient qualities. Dried okra can be found as far afield as the bazaars of the Middle East and the homes of the Gullah of the Lowcountry, where the pods are dried and strung garland-like along with shrimp heads to provide seasoning and thickening for their roux-less gumbos and soups. In Antebellum South Carolina, okra seeds were dried by the enslaved and used as a substitute for coffee (a practice that was adopted by their owners during the privations of the Civil War).
Savor that slime
Okra's lack of respect in the culinary world is due to its propensity toward ooze. Okra simply does not behave. It is tricky. It cannot be tamed into submission by the cook who does not know how to use it properly. The more it's cut, the more it's sticky. Some dishes in Brazil and on the African continent make a point of releasing as much of the ooze as possible, resulting in thick glue-like sheets of almost elastic consistency. In Louisiana, folks understand that the beauty of okra is in the thing that is most decried by the unknowing -- its "slime." The prodigious thickening properties of the vegetable mean that it can take a thin watery soup and transform it into a substantial one.
Those who are hellbent on defying okra's natural propensity toward ooze can fry it or blanch young tender pods and serve them in a salad with a light vinaigrette as they do in parts of Brazil. It is said that a squeeze of lemon juice or a bit of vinegar in the cooking water will cut down the stick, but I say savor the slime. Let okra do its own magnificent thing. After all, it's only doing what comes naturally.
Jessica B. Harris is the author of 11 critically acclaimed cookbooks documenting the foods and foodways of the African Diaspora. In 2010 she was named to the James Beard Who's Who of American Food and Beverage.
Link for Judith Carney and Richard Nicholas Rosomoff's new work: "In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa's Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World.
Photos, from top:
Okra on a cutting board. Credit: Mona Makela
Okra plant. Credit: Jessica B. Harris
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Jessica B. Harris