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GREEN CORN SOUP (a German recipe)
Boil one pint of unripe green corn in water until sufficiently tender, then pass through a sieve, and mix it with a quart of nicely-flavoured clear gravy soup. Let all boil up together, and serve in a tureen with toasted sippets. A few young spinach-leaves may be boiled in the corn to make it a brighter green. Time, half an hour, or more. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A thin puree of green grain let down with clear broth. The main difficulty is deciding what "corn" means, since the answer changes the dish entirely.
- What "green corn" is hereIn American books of this period green corn means fresh sweet corn on the cob. In a British book giving a German recipe, corn may well mean grain in the older sense, in which case the dish would be a relative of Grunkernsuppe, made from unripe spelt; the recipe itself does not say. It works either way, and the spelt version would taste nutty rather than sweet.
- Imperial measuresCassell's pint is 20 fl oz and the quart 40 fl oz, so this is roughly 2.5 cups of grain or kernels to 5 cups of soup. If using unripe spelt, a pint by volume of dry grain is a great deal; start with half that and thin to taste.
- Gravy soupNot gravy in the modern sense. Gravy soup was a clear, well-flavoured brown stock from beef and veal bones, closer to a light consomme. A good unsalted beef stock, strained until clear, is the equivalent.
- Passing through a sieveThis was done with a wooden spoon or a tammy cloth. A food mill or a brief blitz in a blender followed by a sieve gets you there faster; the sieve still matters, because corn hulls and spelt bran will make the soup gritty otherwise.
- SippetsSmall triangles or dice of bread toasted dry, served alongside or floated on top. Cut them thin so they do not go to pulp in the tureen.
- The spinachPurely for colour, and it works: a small handful of young leaves boiled with the grain and pureed with it will lift a drab beige soup to pale green. Add it late so the colour does not turn olive.
- TimingHalf an hour is enough for fresh sweet corn kernels but short for whole grain, which may want 45 minutes to an hour. Test by biting rather than by clock, which is what "or more" is acknowledging.
- SeasoningThe original assumes the gravy soup arrives already "nicely-flavoured". If your stock is unsalted, season at the end, and a little cream or a knob of butter stirred in off the heat rounds out what is otherwise a very lean soup.
Soups of unripe green grain are a genuine German regional tradition, centred on Grunkern, the spelt of the Franconian and Baden countryside harvested while still soft and green and then kiln-dried over beechwood, which gives it a smoky, nutty flavour. The practice is generally traced to the need to salvage a crop threatened by bad weather before it ripened, after which the salvaged grain proved good enough to make deliberately. Cassell's, compiling from every European kitchen it could reach, prints the recipe under the English word "corn", which may well be meant in its older sense of grain of any kind hat has has confused readers of Victorian cookbooks ever since American sweet corn took the word over. The dish also follows a familiar pattern: cook, sieve, and let down with a good clear stock, with a green leaf added for the sake of the colour rather than the taste.