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Bean Soup (Soak well one and a half pints)
Soak well one and a half pints of good beans for about ten hours. Place them over the fire with five quarts of water and one pound of salt pork, Boil slowly three or more hours and add a little pepper. Strain and serve with slices of lemon.
A plain nineteenth-century pottage that relies on two things: dried beans measured by volume, and salt pork doing all the seasoning work. A few notes before you start.
- The bean measureOne and a half pints dry is about 3 cups, roughly 1 1/4 lb of dried beans. The recipe does not name a variety; small white navy or pea beans were the common dried bean of the period and are a reasonable choice here.
- Water to bean ratioFive quarts to 3 cups of beans is very thin by modern taste, because the soup is strained and reduces hard over three hours of open-pot simmering. If you want a soup rather than a broth, start with 3 to 3 1/2 quarts and top up as needed.
- Salt porkA pound of salt pork is the salt in this recipe, which is why none is called for. Modern salt pork varies a good deal in cure; rinse it, and taste before adding any salt of your own at the end. A smoked ham hock is a reasonable stand-in but changes the flavour toward smoke.
- SoakingTen hours is a full overnight soak in cold water, and it still matters for even cooking. Drain the soaking water and start fresh.
- "Boil slowly"This means a bare simmer, not a rolling boil, which breaks the beans into mush and clouds the pot. Three hours is realistic for old-style dried beans; today's beans are often tender in 1 1/2 to 2 hours, so test rather than watch the clock.
- StrainingThe period instruction produces a clear, thin bean broth and discards the solids. Some cooks now press the beans through the sieve, or blend a portion and return it, for body; that departs from the written method, which discards them.
- The lemonAcid cuts the flat starchiness and the salt pork fat, and many will find the strained broth flat without it. The recipe serves the slices with the soup rather than cooking them in it.
- YieldA generous quantity: five quarts of water reduced over three hours will serve at least eight to ten as a first course, likely more.
Dried beans and a piece of salt pork were pantry staples in any house that laid in winter provisions, which is why bean soup appears in general household books like this one. Lemon served with bean soup turns up elsewhere in period cookery, though the reason for it is not documented. A clear soup was often considered more refined than a thick one, which may lie behind the instruction to strain.