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Cream of Pea Soup
2 Cupfuls Fresh or Canned Peas, Put Through the Food-chopper 1 Pint Milk 1 Pint Water 1 Sprig Parsley (optional) 1 Slice of Onion (optional) 11/2 Teaspoonfuls Salt ¼ Teaspoonful Pepper 1/2 Teaspoonful Sugar 2 Tablespoonfuls Snowdrift 3 Tablespoonfuls Flour The onion and parsley may be put through the food-chopper with the peas. Combine these vegetables with the water and simmer until the peas are tender, replenishing the water as it evaporates, Add the milk and seasonings, and thicken with the Snowdrift and flour which have been creamed together. Let the soup boil for a moment or two. If desired, the vegetables may be strained out. The vegetable flavor is much more pronounced and the food-value greatly enhanced by this new method of making.
A straightforward brand-cookbook soup from the era when shortening was being promoted as a substitute for butter in every application, including roux. It works as written; the notes below cover the vessel, the fat, and the texture.
- SnowdriftA vegetable shortening made from cottonseed oil, sold by the Southern Cotton Oil Company; the early product was a compound shortening, with hydrogenated versions coming later. Two tablespoons of any neutral solid shortening will behave the same; butter makes a richer soup.
- Creamed togetherThe shortening and flour are worked to a smooth paste cold, not cooked, then whisked into the hot soup. This is a beurre manie rather than a roux, and it must go in gradually with steady whisking or it will set into lumps.
- The food-chopperA hand-cranked grinder. A food processor pulsed a few times gives the same coarse texture; a blender will puree the soup smooth, which changes the character the recipe is after.
- Canned peasCanned peas of the period were cooked much softer than anything sold today. If you use canned, drain them and shorten the simmer to about ten minutes; frozen peas need five to eight minutes.
- Boiling after thickening"Boil for a moment or two" means just long enough to cook out the raw flour, roughly a minute. Milk-based soups scorch quickly on the bottom, so keep the heat moderate and stir.
- SeasoningThe half teaspoon of sugar may be intended to lift canned peas, and can be left out with fresh or frozen. A teaspoon and a half of salt for a quart of liquid is on the generous side; add it in stages.
- YieldRoughly a quart and a half with the vegetables left in, less if strained; four to six servings.
This comes from a cookbook published to sell a product: Snowdrift was one of the first widely marketed cottonseed shortenings, and its promotional cookbooks set out to prove the fat could stand in for butter and lard anywhere in the kitchen. The closing line, promising that "the food-value greatly enhanced by this new method," is advertising copy in recipe form, and the "new method" being praised is really just leaving the pea pulp in the soup rather than straining it out. That was a genuine talking point at the time, since classical practice sieved cream soups relentlessly and the new nutrition writing of the 1910s and 1920s was beginning to argue for keeping vegetable solids in the dish. Cream of pea soup itself long predates the brand, appearing in English and American cookery as a purée thinned with milk, sometimes made from dried split peas in winter and fresh peas in summer.