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COTTAGE SOUP (another way)
Put a large lump of dripping the size of a turkey's egg into a stewpan, with half a pound of fresh beef cut into small pieces, two large turnips, two large carrots, and two leeks, all finely sliced. Place them over a clear fire, and move them about for eight or ten minutes, until half cooked. Add, a little at a time, two cupfuls of cold water and half a pound of rice. Boil for five or six minutes, then add four quarts of hot water, two table-spoonfuls of salt, and a dessert-spoonful of pepper. Boil once more, skim the soup well, then draw it to the side of the fire, and simmer it gently but continuously for three hours. Serve a little powdered mint with it, to be used or not, according to taste. Sufficient for three quarts. Probable cost, 4d. per quart.
A frugal Victorian pot-au-feu in which half a pound of beef is stretched across three quarts of soup by rice and root vegetables. Nothing here is difficult, but two of the quantities need translating before you cook.
- A turkey's egg of drippingRoughly 2 to 3 oz, or a scant quarter cup. Beef dripping gives the right flavour; butter or a neutral oil will work, though the soup loses some of its character.
- The salt and pepper are the hingeTwo tablespoons of salt and a dessertspoonful (2 teaspoons) of pepper for three quarts is aggressive by current palates, and it is going into plain water with unsalted dripping. Add a teaspoon of salt at the start, season properly at the end, and treat the pepper as a starting point of half a teaspoon.
- Rice and three hoursHalf a pound of rice simmered for three hours will collapse entirely and thicken the soup to a near-porridge, which appears to be the expected result. For distinct grains, hold the rice back and add it about 20 minutes before serving.
- Water and reductionFour quarts plus two cupfuls of water against a stated yield of three quarts implies a fair loss over the three hours' simmering. On a modern hob, simmer partly covered and top up or reduce as needed to land near three quarts.
- Browning the meat and vegetablesThe eight to ten minutes of stirring is a light fry to develop colour, not a full cook. Use a heavy-bottomed pan over medium heat and let the vegetables take some colour before the water goes in.
- SkimmingSkim once as it comes to the boil and again after twenty minutes. Half a pound of fresh beef will throw a fair amount of grey scum, and the soup is clearer and cleaner-tasting for the trouble.
- StewpanAny 6-quart or larger heavy pot. The recipe assumes a pan wide enough to fry in first, so a Dutch oven suits it better than a tall stockpot.
- YieldThree quarts, serving six to eight as a main course with bread. The powdered mint at the table is dried mint, offered as an optional garnish rather than stirred through.
Cassell's carried a whole family of soups built to a price: the note "probable cost, 4d. per quart" is doing as much work as the ingredient list. Recipes of this kind descend from the cheap institutional broths popularised in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, generally traced to Count Rumford's soup kitchens, which set out to prove that a little meat, a starch and root vegetables could feed a family for pennies. Here the technique earns its keep: frying the beef and roots in dripping before any water is added builds flavour that half a pound of meat could never give three quarts of liquid on its own, and the rice cooked to collapse gives body in place of fat. The dish of powdered mint handed round separately is a small courtesy, leaving a strong flavouring to the eater rather than the cook.