Halifax Soup
Put a good meat bone on at 6 o'clock and boil until II, in about three quarts of water. Skim occasionally the impurities which arise. Then put in one half dozen tomatoes, three carrots, one onion and four Irish potatoes, all chopped fine. Season with salt and pepper to taste. When vegetables are done, strain the soup and replace on the fire. Allow it to boil up and then thicken with a little flour. Before sending to the table, drop in a few parsley leaves. Mrs. R. M. S. 1
A long-simmered bone broth finished as a strained, lightly thickened vegetable soup. The instructions assume a cook who is in the kitchen all morning; the method adapts easily to a modern schedule.
- "Boil until II"A printer's slip for 11 — six o'clock until eleven, roughly five hours of simmering. Any long extraction of a meaty bone will do; three to four hours at a bare tremble gives the same result with less evaporation.
- Simmer, not boilDespite the wording, keep the pot just below a boil. A rolling boil emulsifies fat into the liquid and clouds the stock.
- Irish potatoesNineteenth-century American usage for ordinary white potatoes, distinguishing them from sweet potatoes. Four medium is about 1 1/2 lb.
- A good meat boneBeef shin, marrow bone or a knuckle with some meat still attached. Ask a butcher; supermarket "soup bones" are often stripped bare and give thin stock. The recipe does not call for browning the bone, though roasting it first deepens the colour.
- The straining stepEverything is cooked and then removed, so the vegetables are flavouring, not garnish. Chop them fine as directed to get maximum extraction in the shorter second cooking, and expect a smooth, brothy soup rather than a chunky one.
- Thickening with flour"A little flour" means about 1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons for three quarts, slaked in cold water or stock to a thin slurry before it goes in, then boiled a minute or two to lose the raw taste. Added dry it will lump.
- Three quarts downA five-hour simmer will reduce three quarts appreciably, more so if the pot is left uncovered. Top up with hot water during the simmer, or start with more; the finished soup will likely be around two quarts, six to eight servings.
- SeasoningThe recipe salts at the vegetable stage rather than at the outset, which is sensible: salt added before a long reduction concentrates as the liquid evaporates, so it is safer to season at the end, after straining.
The name is a puzzle of the kind common in community cookbooks, where place names attached to soups often signal little more than where a contributor thought the recipe came from, or where she once ate something like it. What the recipe itself shows is the household economy of the stockpot: a bone set on early in the morning and left to work while other cooking went on around it, then turned into a meal with roots and tomatoes. The instruction to strain everything out and thicken with flour produces a smooth soup rather than the chunky vegetable broth the ingredients would otherwise give. The signature "Mrs. R. M. S." is typical of contributor cookbooks of the era, in which contributors were often identified only by initials or by a husband's name.