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Giblet Soup, German
Put one quart of haricot beans into cold water to soak the day before the soup is wanted, then drain them, boil them until quite tender, and press half of them through a coarse sieve. Stew the giblets, as in the last recipe but one, with two quarts of stock, and seasoning. When they are tender, remove and cut them into small pieces, strain the soup, and mix it smoothly with the beans, both mashed and whole; add the giblets, let them get hot once more, and serve. The soup should be as thick as cream. A variation may be made by boiling very small potatoes instead of beans in the soup until tender, but unbroken. Time, two hours and a half to prepare the soup. Sufficient for six persons. Probable cost, beans, 4d. or 6d. per quart; giblets, 6d. per set.
A frugal Victorian bean-and-giblet soup that depends on a cross-reference the modern reader no longer has. Everything it needs can be reconstructed from the text itself.
- The missing recipe"As in the last recipe but one" appears to mean simply: cover the cleaned giblets with the stock, add the seasoning, and simmer gently until tender, skimming as you go.
- GibletsIn this period giblets meant the whole trim of a bird — neck, gizzard, heart, liver, wing tips and sometimes the scalded feet; goose and turkey sets were the usual ones for soup. Supermarket giblet packets are much smaller, so two or three sets will be needed; ask a butcher for necks and gizzards to make up the weight.
- Add the liver lateThe gizzard and neck want an hour or more of gentle simmering; the liver needs ten minutes at most, or it turns grainy and pushes the soup bitter. Hold it back and drop it in near the end.
- A quart of haricot beansDry measure, not weight, and an imperial quart at 40 fl oz: nearer 4½ to 5 US cups, roughly 2 lb of small white beans, which is generous for six and will yield a very substantial soup. Halving it gives a more familiar modern portion. Canned cannellini work if you skip the overnight soak and shorten the boiling.
- Two quarts of stockAbout ten US cups, an imperial quart being 40 fl oz. Use a light poultry stock; the giblets will darken and deepen it as they cook.
- Thick as creamThis is the hinge. The mashed half of the beans is the only thickener, so sieve or blend it properly and add it to the strained broth gradually until the soup coats a spoon. Too thin and it reads as watery bean broth; too thick and it will catch on the pan bottom when reheated.
- Sieve or blenderA sieve was the usual means of puréeing pulses in a Victorian kitchen, and pressing the beans through it holds back the skins, which is part of the smoothness. A blender or food mill is faster; pass the purée through a sieve afterwards if you want the original texture.
- The potato variationSmall waxy potatoes, boiled in the soup until just tender and left whole, replace the beans entirely — which means no thickening. Expect a clear-brothed soup rather than a creamy one.
- Yield and timingSix as written, in about two and a half hours plus the overnight soak. The soup improves on standing; add the liver only on the final reheating if making ahead.
Cassell's often labelled its variations by nation — French, German, Italian — and the marker here is presumably the haricot bean; dried beans and pulses carried soups through the winter in the German-speaking lands in a way they never quite did in Britain, though English cooks of the period as readily associated the haricot with French cookery. The giblets point to the goose: a bird kept for its fat, its liver and its feathers as much as its meat, and traditionally eaten at Martinmas and Christmas across the German-speaking lands, leaving a set of neck, gizzard, heart and feet too good to waste. Recipes of this kind — a set of giblets at sixpence, a quart of beans at fourpence, dinner for six — suit a reference work for households that costed every meal, and the "probable cost" line was as much the point as the method.