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Family Soup
Peel and slice two pounds of potatoes, two carrots, a turnip, and a middle-sized onion. Put the onion into a frying-pan with two pounds of shin of beef and half a pound of lean bacon also sliced; add a small cabbage well chopped, and fry till the meat is slightly browned. Drain from the fat, put the meat and sliced vegetables into a stewpan with two quarts of water, and add, after it has simmered one hour, two quarts more of water. Skim carefully before adding the water, which should be poured in by degrees. When the vegetables are done, rub them to a smooth pulp through a colander, and when the meat has stewed three hours remove it from the stewpan, and simmer the whole for some time longer. Strain, thicken with the potato, put the meat back cut up into small bits, and serve hot with toasted sippets. Probable cost, 6d. per quart. Sufficient for twelve persons.
A frugal one-pot beef and vegetable soup that stretches two pounds of shin into twelve servings. The method as printed is slightly muddled about the order of straining and pulping, so read the whole thing before you start.
- Sort out the orderThe sensible sequence is: fry, drain, simmer meat and vegetables in 2 quarts water for an hour, skim, add 2 more quarts gradually, lift the vegetables out when tender and pass them through a sieve, lift the meat out at the three-hour mark, then reduce the broth, whisk the vegetable pulp back in to thicken, and return the diced meat. Straining after the pulp has gone in would undo the thickening.
- Shin of beefAsk for beef shin or shank, bone in if you can get it. It is all collagen and needs the full three hours of gentle simmering; anything leaner will be dry and stringy long before the soup has body.
- StewpanA heavy lidded saucepan or Dutch oven of at least 6 quarts. Four quarts of water on top of two and a half pounds of meat and a couple of pounds of potatoes and other vegetables fills a pot faster than the ingredient list suggests.
- BaconBacon of this period was often more heavily salted than modern streaky. Use unsmoked bacon or pancetta, and taste before adding any salt at all.
- Simmer, never boilThe recipe says skim carefully and add the water by degrees for a reason: a bare simmer keeps the broth clear and lets scum rise where you can remove it. A rolling boil emulsifies the fat and clouds the whole thing.
- SippetsSmall triangles or cubes of bread, toasted or fried, scattered over at the table. Crustless bread cut into half-inch dice and toasted dry does the job.
- SeasoningNo salt, pepper or herbs are specified. A bay leaf and a few peppercorns in the pot, and salt corrected at the end, cost nothing and make it worth eating.
- YieldTwelve portions, roughly 4 quarts before reduction. It thickens further on standing and reheats better the next day; loosen with water or stock.
"Family soup" in a late-Victorian dictionary of cookery means exactly what it says: not a clear consommé for a dinner party but the pot that feeds the whole household, meat and vegetables and thickening all in one vessel. The stated cost of sixpence a quart is the point of the entry as much as the flavour is; Cassell's audience included readers running kitchens on a fixed weekly allowance, and the book routinely prices its dishes so a cook could judge whether she could afford one. The technique of thickening with sieved potato rather than a flour roux is the same economy at work, using something already in the pot instead of buying more. Sippets — the word is old, generally traced to a diminutive of "sop" — were the standard garnish for any thick soup or hash of the era.