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BROWN SOUP (another way)
Slice and fry in butter half a dozen carrots, with the same quantity of turnips, four potatoes, four onions, and three heads of celery. Put them into a pan with five quarts of boiling water. Let them stew four or five hours, then rub through a sieve, season with pepper and salt, then boil and serve.
A meatless brown soup that takes its colour and all of its flavour from the initial frying, since there is no stock in it at all. Everything depends on how far you take the vegetables in the butter.
- The hinge: brown properlyWith no meat, bones or stock in the pot, the only source of depth is the caramelisation in the frying pan. Cook the sliced vegetables in butter over moderate heat until they are genuinely deep brown at the edges, not merely softened, and deglaze the pan with a little of the water so none of the fond is left behind.
- Quantities"Half a dozen carrots, with the same quantity of turnips" means six of each. Three heads of celery means three whole bunches, not three stalks — a great deal of celery by modern eyes, and it drives much of the flavour.
- Scale and yieldFive quarts of water plus the vegetables makes an enormous quantity, around 10-12 servings after reduction. Halving the whole recipe is sensible for a domestic pan.
- Cooking timeFour or five hours is far longer than root vegetables need. Ninety minutes at a bare simmer will have everything collapsing, and a longer boil mainly costs you liquid and the fresher notes of the celery and onion.
- Sieving"Rub through a sieve" is the Victorian purée. A food mill gives the closest texture; a blender is faster but produces a smoother, more modern soup, and a pass through a sieve afterwards removes the celery strings either way.
- SeasoningPepper and salt alone will taste thin to a modern palate given the absence of stock. Salt firmly, and check the consistency after the final boil — the purée thickens as it stands and may want loosening.
Cassell's gives more than one brown soup; this one is made entirely of vegetables and water, the sort of thing suited to a household economising on meat. The word "brown" here describes a technique rather than an ingredient — colour drawn out of vegetables in hot butter, the same principle behind the browned onion that darkens a gravy. The recipe demonstrates that flavour can be built from browning alone, without a stockpot. The heavy reliance on carrot, turnip, onion and celery reflects what a British kitchen garden or greengrocer could supply cheaply all winter.