Economical Soup
Take bits of beef or mutton left over, also bones of same broken. Put in a kettle with a few nice Irish potatoes; to this add four pints of cold water, two small onions cut up fine, one dessertspoonful of rice. Boil the ingredients one and a half hours; strain and add one and a half pints of milk when boiling, into which a lump of butter size of an egg and a tablespoonful of flour has been stirred. Season with salt, pepper and bits of celery finely chopped; also small squares of bread or cracker fried brown in butter.
A leftover-and-bones soup finished as a cream soup. The one thing to get right is the milk: add it off a hard boil and keep the pot below a simmer once it is in, or it will catch on the bottom and taste scorched.
- MeasuresFour pints of water is 8 cups; one and a half pints of milk is 3 cups. A dessertspoonful is about 2 teaspoons. "A lump of butter size of an egg" is roughly 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons.
- Irish potatoesSimply white potatoes, named to distinguish them from sweet potatoes, which in much of the American South were the default "potato." Any waxy or all-purpose potato works; the recipe says only "a few," so quantity is left to the cook.
- StrainingThe instruction is to strain, which means the potatoes, onion and rice have done their work as flavor and body and are discarded along with the bones. If you would rather keep the vegetables, pull the bones and any gristle and leave the rest in; the soup will be thicker and rougher.
- The thickeningButter and flour are stirred into the milk rather than cooked as a roux; the recipe does not say whether the milk is cold or hot. Whisk it smooth before it goes near the pot, pour it into the hot broth in a stream, and cook two or three minutes at a bare simmer to lose the raw flour taste.
- The meatCooked scraps of beef or mutton are already tender and will only shred further over an hour and a half. Add a handful of chopped meat back after straining rather than boiling all of it away.
- BonesCracked marrow or shin bones give the best result; ask a butcher, since supermarket meat rarely arrives with usable bone. Skim the gray foam that rises in the first fifteen minutes for a cleaner broth.
- Celery and croutonsThe chopped celery is listed with the seasoning at the end, so it goes in late and will stay fairly fresh-tasting. The bread or cracker squares are fried in butter separately; they can be added at the table so they do not soften in the pot.
- YieldAbout two and a half quarts, serving six generously as a first course or four as a supper. Salt only after the milk is in, as the broth concentrates while it boils.
Soups like this are the working end of a nineteenth-century kitchen, where a roast might be expected to yield further meals and the bones another. "Economical" here means the joint has already been eaten, and what remains is scraps, bone, a little rice, two onions and milk. The finishing with butter, flour and milk turns broth into something closer to a cream soup, a familiar way of making thin stock feel substantial enough to serve as a course. "Irish potatoes" is a period Americanism, long current in the American South, and the fried bread squares are the household version of croutons.