Spanish Soup
4 cups Brown Stock. 5 tablespoons flour. 2 cups tomato pulp 2 tablespoons freshly grated 1 large, green, finely chopped horseradish. pepper. 1 medium-sized onion, finely 1/2 tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce. chopped. 4 tablespoons butter.
Salt, pepper and cayenne, or A few drops Tobasco Sauce. 1/2 cup hot cooked rice.
PROCESS: Cook pepper and onion in butter five minutes. Add flour, stir until well blended and delicately browned, then add gradually stock and tomato pulp; let simmer twenty minutes. Rub through a sieve and season highly with salt, pepper, and cayenne or Tobasco. Before serving add Worcestershire, horseradish and rice.
A thickened, highly seasoned tomato and brown stock soup, strained smooth and finished at the table stage with horseradish, Worcestershire and rice. The seasoning is meant to be assertive; the finishing ingredients go in off the heat.
- Add the horseradish last, off the heatFreshly grated horseradish loses its pungency within a minute or two of simmering. Stir it in with the Worcestershire once the soup is off the burner and serve promptly.
- Brown stockRoasted-bone beef or veal stock. A good unsalted beef stock works; if using commercial stock, hold back the salt until after you strain and taste, since reduction concentrates it.
- Tomato pulpMeaning fresh tomatoes peeled, seeded and crushed, or canned tomatoes drained of their thinnest liquid. Two cups of good canned crushed tomatoes is the practical substitute.
- The rouxFive tablespoons flour to four of butter is a stiff, dry roux. Cook it to a light hazel color before adding liquid, and add the stock gradually or it will lump.
- Straining"Rub through a sieve" is the period method for a smooth soup. A blender followed by a fine strainer is a faster modern approach; what stays behind in the sieve is the fibrous pepper and onion and any tomato skin and seed.
- TobascoA variant spelling of Tabasco common in cookbooks of the period. The recipe offers it as an alternative to the cayenne, not in addition: "season highly with salt, pepper, and cayenne or Tobasco."
- The riceHalf a cup of hot cooked rice added at the end, not cooked in the soup, so it stays separate rather than dissolving into starch. Cook it while the soup simmers.
- YieldSix cups of liquid go in, but after a twenty-minute simmer and straining expect roughly five cups, plus the rice; four to six small servings as a first course.
Soups labeled "Spanish" in American cookbooks of this era rarely had much to do with Spain; the word signaled tomato, sweet pepper and heat, the same shorthand that produced Spanish rice and Spanish omelet. What the recipe really shows is the early twentieth-century American taste for bottled pungency: Worcestershire, Tabasco, cayenne and raw grated horseradish are all piled onto a classic French-technique base of brown stock thickened with a browned roux. 52 Sunday Dinners was built around a full menu for every Sunday of the year, which is why the soup arrives with no headnote and no serving count, only its place in a menu.