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Red Pottage
1/2 a pound dried beans, 1 teacup tomato puree, 1 beet, 2 tablespoons Crisco, 2 onions, piece of celery, 1 small piece of parsnip, 2 quarts good stock. Put Crisco in saucepan then add onions, celery and parsnip; cook a little, do not let it get very brown, then add dried beans, tomato puree; sliced beet and add pepper and salt to taste and then stock, and boil till all is tender. Rub through a fine sieve, reheat and serve.
A thick sieved bean soup coloured with beet. It works well, but two details in the original will decide whether the beans ever soften.
- Soak the beans firstNothing in the recipe says to soak them. Cover the half pound in cold water for 8 hours, or they may still be firm after two hours of simmering.
- Hold back the tomatoAcid slows the softening of bean skins. Add the tomato puree once the beans are tender rather than at the start, then simmer another ten minutes to marry it.
- A teacupPeriod equivalents vary, but a teacup is usually reckoned at somewhere around 3/4 cup rather than a full measuring cup. For the puree the difference is not critical.
- CriscoThis book was published to sell it. Two tablespoons of any neutral fat does the same job; butter or olive oil gives a better base for the aromatics.
- "Cook a little, do not let it get very brown"This is the instruction that shapes the soup. The onion, celery and parsnip should sweat until translucent and sweet, five to seven minutes over moderate heat. Browning muddies both the flavour and the clear red the beet is there to provide.
- Timing"Boil till all is tender" means a steady simmer of 1 1/2 to 2 hours for most dried white beans. A hard rolling boil breaks the beans up before the parsnip is done and scorches the bottom.
- The sieveA fine sieve and a wooden spoon was the usual purée method here. A blender or stick blender first, then a pass through the sieve to catch skins, gets a smoother result in a fraction of the time.
- Seasoning and stock"Good stock" carries this soup; a weak one leaves it flat and starchy. Salt lightly at the start and correct at the end, since two quarts reduce considerably over two hours.
- YieldRoughly 1 1/2 to 2 quarts finished after reduction, serving six to eight as a first course. It thickens on standing and will need thinning with stock when reheated.
The name is biblical: in Genesis, Esau sells his birthright to Jacob for a mess of red pottage, traditionally understood as a lentil stew. This version reaches the colour with beet and tomato rather than red lentils. The book itself is one of the Crisco promotional cookbooks issued by Procter & Gamble in the 1910s, after the hydrogenated shortening was introduced in 1911 — hence the two tablespoons of Crisco standing where an older recipe would have said butter or drippings. It appears under "Eggs," though there is no egg in it.