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Autumn Soup
Cut into thin slices the white parts of four leeks, the same of two heads of celery, and a lettuce; wash, and throw them into boiling broth; add a pint of young peas, a little sugar and pepper, two large spoonfuls of flour, mixed thinly and smooth with some cold stock. Stir the broth with a table-spoon to render it smooth, and after boiling it an hour and a half pour it into the tureen with little "crusts" of bread fried in dripping. These last should be carefully dried in the hot closet so that they shall be crisp and not greasy. Probable cost, 1s. 2d., without the stock.
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A thickened vegetable broth of the kind Cassell's puts in the chapter on principles, where the point is the method rather than a fixed shopping list. The quantity of stock is never stated: for the vegetables given, 2 to 2 1/2 quarts of light chicken or veal broth gives soup for six.
- The hour and a halfA long simmer of the kind assumed when the stockpot was already on the range. With fresh or frozen peas and a stock already made, the vegetables are done in 20 to 25 minutes; the leeks and celery want the head start, the lettuce and peas only the last five minutes or they turn grey and mealy.
- Thickening without lumpsThe hinge of the recipe. Mix the two tablespoons of flour with cold stock until perfectly smooth, then trickle it into the simmering broth while stirring, not the reverse. Flour tipped dry into hot liquid seizes into lumps that stirring is unlikely to disperse.
- "Two large spoonfuls"A Victorian tablespoon was a serving spoon, larger than a modern level tablespoon, and the spoonfuls here are probably heaped. Aim for a broth that just coats the spoon rather than a veloute, adding the flour liaison by degrees.
- A pint of young peasShelled peas, measured by volume: about 10 oz, or roughly 2 lb in the pod. Frozen petits pois substitute directly and are closer to the intended sweetness than most fresh supermarket peas.
- DrippingRendered beef fat from the roasting tin, saved and kept. Clarified butter or a neutral oil works, though dripping gives the savoury note the recipe is relying on to season the croutons.
- The hot closetA warming compartment attached to the range, kept at a low heat. A modern oven at its lowest setting does the same job: it drives the surface fat off the fried bread so the crusts stay crisp in the soup instead of going slick.
- Add the crusts at tableThey are poured into the tureen at the last moment for a reason. Left in the pot they dissolve, and the soup's only textural contrast goes with them.
- Cost noteThe 1s. 2d. is given "without the stock", the stock being assumed as a by-product of other cooking rather than a purchase.
This dish demonstrates two lessons at once: how to build a soup from whatever the kitchen garden is giving up, and how to thicken with a cold flour liaison. "Autumn soup" is a seasonal label rather than a dish with a fixed identity, one of a family of month-by-month vegetable soups in Victorian manuals alongside spring and summer versions, the difference being simply what came in from the garden. Leeks, celery and lettuce all stand in an English kitchen garden late in the year, and the peas are the tail of the crop; the flour and the fried bread do the work that a richer household would have got from cream or a stronger stock. The insistence on drying the crusts in the hot closet is characteristic of the book's temper, which returns again and again to the idea that greasiness is the mark of careless cooking rather than of generosity.