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Pear Soup
Pare, core, and slice six or eight large pears. Put them into a stewpan with a penny roll cut into thin slices, half a dozen cloves, and three pints of water. Let them simmer until they are quite tender, then press them through a coarse sieve, and return the puree to the saucepan, with two ounces of sugar, the strained juice of a fresh lemon, and half a tumblerful of light wine. Let the soup boil for about ten minutes, when it will be ready for serving. Send small spongecakes to table with this dish. Time, about one hour and a half to stew the pears. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for six or seven persons.
A sweet fruit soup of the kind Victorian cookery books served either as a first course or as a light pudding. The only tricky parts are the bread quantity and the long stewing time, both of which need translating.
- A penny rollA small plain white bread roll; its weight varied with the price of flour, but something in the region of 2-3 oz is a fair working assumption. About 2 oz of white bread, crusts left on, torn or sliced, will do. It is there as the thickener; without it the soup is thin fruit juice.
- Three pintsAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so this is 60 imperial fl oz, a little over 7 US cups. Scale to 6 cups if you want a thicker, more pudding-like result.
- Half a tumblerful of light wineA tumbler of the period held 8-10 fl oz, so about 1/2 cup. A dry or off-dry white, a light red, or a hock-style Riesling all suit it; sweet dessert wine will overwhelm the 2 oz of sugar.
- Cut the stewing timeAn hour and a half suggests hard, half-ripe cooking pears. Ripe modern pears collapse in 20-30 minutes at a bare simmer. Cook until a knife slides through with no resistance and stop there.
- Sieve or blender"Press through a coarse sieve" gives a slightly grainy texture that is part of the dish. A blender or food processor followed by a single pass through a medium sieve gets you close and takes a fraction of the time.
- Fish out the clovesSix whole cloves are easy to lose in the pulp and unpleasant to bite. Tie them in muslin or count them out before sieving.
- The final boilThe recipe calls for about ten minutes' boiling after the lemon and wine go in. Stir often; the bread-thickened puree catches on the base of the pan quickly.
- ServingSix to seven as written. Good hot in cold weather, and equally good chilled, when it thickens noticeably and needs a splash more water. Small sponge cakes are sent to table alongside.
Fruit soups belong to a tradition that survived far longer in northern and central Europe than in Britain: Scandinavian and German kitchens still serve chilled cherry, plum and pear soups, thickened with bread or sago and sharpened with lemon and wine. The source is not named on the page, though the recipe has the character of the encyclopaedic Victorian household books comell such as Cassell's, often dated to the 1870s and reissued for decades after that gathered continental dishes alongside plain English cookery, and it files this one under soups rather than sweets. The stale bread thickener is the older method, predating the routine use of cornflour, and the roll was reckoned in pence because bakers sold rolls at a fixed price rather than by weight. The costing of one shilling for six or seven servings marks this out as an economical dish.