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Carrot Soup with Rice
Wash, clean, prepare, and slice eight carrots, eight turnips, eight small onions stuck with one or two cloves, a salt-spoonful of celery-seed bruised and tied in a muslin bag, and a slice of lean ham cut into small pieces. Put these into a stewpan with a piece of butter the size of a large egg, move them constantly, and when they are nicely browned, add, a little at a time, three quarts of good stock. Simmer until the vegetables are quite tender. Press them through a coarse sieve with the back of a spoon, return them to the saucepan, season with pepper and salt, and boil twenty minutes longer. The soup should be of the consistency of very thick cream. Place some boiled rice in the tureen, and pour the soup on it. Probable cost, 1s. 6d.
A thick browned-vegetable purée thinned with stock — straightforward once a few Victorian measures are pinned down.
- Butter "the size of a large egg"Roughly 2 oz, or half a stick. It is a generous amount, and it is doing real work: the vegetables need fat enough to brown rather than steam.
- A salt-spoonfulThe Victorian salt-spoon held about a quarter teaspoon. Bruise the celery seed in a mortar and tie it in muslin or a tea filter so it can be lifted out before sieving.
- Quantities and yieldEight carrots, eight turnips and eight onions to three quarts of stock is a large pot — 8 to 10 servings. Halve it all for a household of four.
- Turnips, not swedesVictorian English recipes normally distinguish the two, so the white turnip is the likely intention here; it stays mild and slightly peppery. Swede would push the soup sweet and orange and blur the carrot.
- Browning is the hinge"Move them constantly" until nicely browned is where the flavour comes from. Take it to a genuine deep colour over medium heat, 15 to 20 minutes, and add the stock in stages so the fond dissolves each time rather than being diluted at once.
- Sieve or blenderPressing through a coarse sieve with a spoon gives a slightly grainy purée. A blender or food mill does the same job in a minute; if you use a blender, work in batches and leave the lid vented for hot liquid.
- The final twenty minutesThat second boil is there to reduce the soup to "the consistency of very thick cream." Judge by thickness, not the clock, and stir often — a heavy carrot purée scorches easily on the bottom.
- The riceAbout a cup of cooked long-grain rice in the tureen is plenty. Keep it hot and separate until serving, or it swells and turns the soup pasty.
- Ham and saltA slice of lean ham plus a well-reduced stock can make this salty on its own. Season only after the final reduction.
Carrot soup was one of the standard "purée" soups of the nineteenth-century English kitchen, built on the French model of browning root vegetables in butter with a little ham or bacon before wetting them with stock, a line that runs through Francatelli and lands here in Cassell's. The rice placed in the tureen rather than cooked in the soup keeps the garnish separate, so a thick purée could be strained smooth and then given texture at the last moment; the same logic lies behind soups "à la Crécy," the classic name for carrot potages, generally traced to a town called Crécy, though which one is disputed. The costing of 1s. 6d. is a reminder of the book's practical bent.