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Lentil Soup
Put a breakfast-capful of green lentils to soak all night in cold water. Drain them and put them into a stewpan with three pints of water or greasy stock, if it is to be had. The liquor in which pork or bacon has been boiled is excellent for the purpose. Put with them six or eight sticks of celery, two onions, one carrot, one turnip, a faggot or bouquet garni, and a crust of stale bread. Bring the liquor to a boil and carefully remove the thick dark scum that rises to the surface, and throw in a little cold water once or twice to assist the scum in rising. As soon as the soup reaches the boiling point, draw the saucepan back and simmer gently for about four hours, or until the lentils are perfectly soft. Turn the whole upon a wire sieve, pick out the bouquet garni, and rub everything else patiently through the sieve into a bowl. The pulp will go through more easily if a little of the liquor is kept hot and is employed to moisten it occasionally. Boil the soup again before sending it to table, and if too thick add a little water; the addition of boiling milk will be considered an improvement by many. The soup must be stirred frequently while boiling, or it will burn. Lentils are in themselves so nourishing that meat stock is not needed.
A plain pulse soup of the sort Cassell's offered as everyday economy cooking. Almost all of it stands up; the two things that need rethinking are the four-hour simmer and the sieve.
- "Breakfast-capful"A misprint for breakfastcupful, the large morning cup of about half an Imperial pint, roughly 10 fl oz. That is about 1¼ US cups of dry lentils, near enough 8 oz by weight, which suits the three pints of liquid given.
- Three pintsImperial pints, so 60 Imperial fl oz, about 1.7 litres or roughly 7¼ US cups. The soup is meant to be thick, and the recipe expects you to thin it at the end.
- Green lentilsWhole green or brown lentils, not split red ones, which collapse and would make the sieving step pointless. Modern lentils are cleaner and fresher than Victorian stock and need no overnight soak; an hour is generous, and none at all is fine.
- The timingFour hours belongs to old, long-stored pulses. Unsoaked green lentils are soft in 40 to 60 minutes, soaked ones sooner. Cook them until they crush easily against the pan, then stop — further boiling only risks the scorching the recipe warns about.
- Instead of the sieveThe patient rubbing through a wire sieve is what a blender or stick blender now does in a minute. Pull the bouquet garni first, as instructed, and blitz the rest, crust of bread included; it is there as a thickener, not a stray.
- Bacon liquor and saltWater in which bacon or a ham hock has boiled is genuinely the best base here, but it can be very salty. Taste it before you commit three pints of it, dilute if needed, and season only at the end.
- The scumSkimming and the splash of cold water matter more with pulses than with meat stock; the grey foam is largely starch and protein thrown off by the lentils, and left in it can make the soup muddy in flavour. Skim during the first ten minutes of the boil.
- FinishingHot milk loosens the purée and softens the earthy flavour; a little cream or a spoonful of the bacon fat does the same. Stir steadily while reheating, as thick lentil purée catches on the bottom of the pan almost instantly.
- YieldSix generous servings as a first course, four as a supper dish with bread.
Lentil soup is among the oldest continuously cooked dishes in Europe and western Asia, and it reached the Victorian table by two quite different routes: as a cheap, filling meat-substitute promoted by economical housekeepers and by vegetarian reformers, and as purée de lentilles, a respectable item of the French repertoire. Cassell's sits between the two — the technique is French, with its faggot of herbs and its laborious sieving, but the frank instruction to use the water that pork or bacon has boiled in is thoroughly English household thrift. The closing line, that lentils are so nourishing meat stock is not needed, reflects a live nineteenth-century argument about pulses as a protein source, one that late-Victorian writers repeated often as meat prices and vegetarian societies both made themselves felt. Green lentils of this kind were largely imported, and were sold by grocers alongside split peas and haricots as the staples of the winter store cupboard.