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CAULIFLOWER SOUP (maigre)
Put a quarter of a pound of butter into a stewpan, let it melt, then stir into it, very smoothly, three dessert-spoonfuls of curry powder, and a tea-spoonful of celery seed. Slice into it a large cauliflower, a large onion, and a table-spoonful of French beans. Fry the vegetables gently for a few minutes, then add, gradually, three pints of boiling water, or the water in which cauliflowers have been boiled. Simmer gently till the vegetables are reduced to a pulp, then strain the soup, and return it to the saucepan. Add a little salt and pepper. Put in a few springs of boiled cauliflower before serving it. A glass of white wine will improve the soup. Serve with boiled rice, and lay a slice of the crumb of bread toasted at the bottom of the tureen. Time, two hours. Probable cost, 1s. 2d. for this quantity. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A meatless curried cauliflower soup from the era before blenders, when "strain" meant forcing soft vegetables through a sieve. The one thing worth changing is the cooking time.
- Two hours is far too longTwo hours is longer than needed -- Sliced cauliflower and onion collapse to a pulp in 30 to 40 minutes of gentle simmering. The long time suits a book that wanted the vegetables soft enough to push through a sieve; past about an hour the cauliflower turns sulphurous and the curry spices go flat and dusty.
- MaigreThe word marks the soup as a lean or fast-day dish, made without meat stock. It is why the liquid is water, or better, the cooking water from a previously boiled cauliflower.
- MeasuresThree imperial pints is about 1.7 litres, roughly 7 US cups. A quarter pound of butter is 115 g, which is generous for that quantity of soup; half that is plenty if you want the curry to taste of spice rather than fat.
- The curry powder is assertiveThree dessert-spoonfuls is roughly 2 tablespoons, and Victorian curry powders tended to be milder and more turmeric-heavy than many modern blends. Start with 1 tablespoon of a contemporary powder, taste after it has cooked into the butter, and add more.
- Celery seedA full teaspoon of celery seed is a lot; it is bitter and camphorous in quantity. Half a teaspoon, lightly crushed, carries the same savoury note.
- Bloom the spices properlyThe curry powder must fry in the melted butter for a minute or two before any liquid goes in, and it must not scorch. Raw curry powder stirred into liquid tastes chalky, and burnt curry powder is bitter beyond rescue.
- French beansOrdinary green beans, topped and cut small. A single tablespoon is a background flavour rather than a visible ingredient.
- StrainingA food mill or a blender followed by a sieve does in a minute what the original expected of a wooden spoon and a hair sieve. Add the reserved cooked florets, the "springs" of the text, after the soup is smooth.
- Bread and riceToast laid in the bottom of the tureen dissolves into the soup, which was the point. If you would rather keep the texture, pass the toast and the boiled rice separately.
- YieldThree or four servings as written, and it reheats well; the wine, if used, is best added at the end so it does not cook away.
Cassell's marks this soup maigre, the French kitchen's term for a dish fit for a fast day, and the label survived in English cookery books as a shorthand: it simply told the cook there was no meat stock in it. What is striking is the curry powder, which by the late nineteenth century had become an ordinary British store-cupboard item rather than an exotic one, freely used to give body to vegetable soups that would otherwise taste thin without bones behind them. The instruction to use the water in which cauliflowers have been boiled belongs to the same economical logic as the recorded cost of 1s. 2d. and the toast placed in the tureen: nothing wasted, and bread doing the work of a thickener. Curried cauliflower soup of essentially this shape has never gone away, though the modern version usually leans on cream or coconut milk where Cassell's leaned on a quarter pound of butter.