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White Soup
2 small onions, 1 turnip, 1 pound potatoes, 1 stalk celery, 2 small parsnips or artichokes, 3 pints water, 1/2 pint milk, 1 tablespoon flour or cornstarch, 2 tablespoons Crisco, and salt to taste.
Cut about 2 pounds of any white vegetables, previously washed and peeled, into pieces, or preferably several kinds mixed, and boil them until soft in the water with salt and Crisco. Rub them through sieve or colander, put them back in the stew pan with milk, and let boil. Put in flour, mixed smoothly with little cold water or milk, let soup boil for 10 minutes, and then serve.
A plain puréed vegetable soup from the Crisco era, built entirely from pale roots so the finished soup stays white. Nothing here is difficult, but the proportions and the thickening step both benefit from a modern eye.
- The vegetable weight is the real measureThe ingredient list adds up to roughly 2 pounds, and the method confirms it: use about 2 lb total of white vegetables in any combination. Substituting cauliflower, leek whites, celeriac or salsify is entirely in the spirit of the original.
- Liquid quantities3 pints water is 6 cups; 1/2 pint milk is 1 cup. If you are using UK pints, that is 7 1/2 cups water and 1 1/4 cups milk. Either reading works, though the soup will be thin until it reduces.
- CriscoHydrogenated vegetable shortening, sold as a substitute for lard and butter when this book was written. Butter or a neutral oil gives a better flavour in the same quantity; 2 tablespoons for 2 lb of vegetables is a modest amount either way.
- Artichokes means Jerusalem artichokesArtichokes probably means Jerusalem artichokes -- A book of this date pairing artichokes with parsnips among white root vegetables most likely means the knobbly sunchoke rather than the globe artichoke. Peel them and expect a sweeter, nuttier soup.
- Sieve or blenderRubbing through a sieve or colander was the usual method; a blender or immersion blender does it in seconds. Pass it through a sieve afterwards only if you want the very smooth texture the original was reaching for.
- The flour slurry is the hingeMix the flour or cornstarch perfectly smooth with cold liquid before it goes near the hot soup, and whisk it in off the boil. Cornstarch needs only two or three minutes to set; the full 10 minutes suits flour, which needs the time to lose its raw taste.
- Keeping it whiteUse the white parts of celery, avoid browning the onions, and cook at a bare simmer once the milk is in. High heat will scorch the milk solids and speckle the soup.
- YieldAbout 2 quarts, serving six as a first course or four as a light supper with bread.
"White soup" is an old English kitchen category rather than a single dish: any pale, thickened, usually creamed soup, historically made with veal or fowl stock and almonds, and served early in a formal dinner. By the early twentieth century the name had come loose from its expensive origins and attached itself to purées of pale vegetables, which cost almost nothing and could be made from whatever the cellar held. The Crisco in the ingredient list places this version after 1911, when Procter & Gamble launched the shortening and underwrote a stream of promotional cookbooks and calendars of menus in which it replaced butter and lard in every recipe it plausibly could.