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POTATO SOUP (another way) (Wash and peel a dozen large) (II)
Wash and peel a dozen large sound potatoes. Cut them into thin slices, dredge them well with flour, and put them into a stewpan with two ounces of fresh butter, a handful of parsley, one large onion, and a little pepper and salt. Barely cover them with cold water, and let them steam gently until soft. Press them through a sieve, and mix with the puree two quarts of nicely-flavoured stock. Boil a few minutes longer, and serve. Time, an hour and a half. Probable cost, exclusive of the stock, 3d. per quart. Sufficient for seven or eight persons.
A plain white purée soup that lives or dies on the stock, since the potatoes bring only body and the aromatics are minimal. Everything up to the sieve is a slow sweat rather than a boil.
- Quantity of potatoesA dozen large potatoes is somewhere around 5-6 lb, which suits the two quarts of stock and the stated seven or eight servings. Halve the whole recipe for four; a floury variety such as russet or Maris Piper purées far more smoothly than a waxy one.
- Why the flour dredgeTossing the slices in flour before they go into the pan is the thickening step. Give it a minute or two in the butter before the water goes in so it does not taste raw.
- "Barely cover with cold water"The instruction is deliberate. Too much water and the purée is thin before the stock is added; the potatoes should steam in their own moisture in a covered pan over low heat, not swim.
- StewpanA heavy saucepan with a tight lid. Keep the heat low enough that the butter never colours, or the finished soup goes beige and tastes faintly scorched.
- The sieveA drum sieve or food mill gives the intended texture. A blender or stick blender is quicker but overworking potato starch turns it gluey, so pulse briefly and stop, or pass it through a mesh sieve as written.
- TimeAn hour and a half is generous. Thinly sliced potatoes will be soft in well under half an hour; the rest of the stated time presumably covers the sieving by hand and the final boil.
- Stock"Nicely-flavoured stock" is the whole flavour of the soup. A good chicken or light veal stock is closest to the book's intent; commercial cubes will make it taste of little but salt, so season only after the stock is in.
- Parsley and onionA handful of parsley presumably went in whole, stalks and all, and would be sieved out with everything else. One large onion for this weight of potato is restrained by modern taste; two, plus a leek, is a defensible addition.
- The cost note3d. per quart excluding stock is a period price, not a guide to anything now. Costings of this kind appear throughout the book's entries.
Potato soup of this kind belongs to the great Victorian family of purée soups, in which a cheap vegetable is softened in butter, sieved, and let down with stock. That the book carries several versions of it, this one marked "another way," reflects how thoroughly the potato had become the cheapest reliable bulk in a British kitchen by the later nineteenth century. The inclusion of a probable cost per quart, a fixture of Cassell's entries, points to the book's real readership: households running on an accounted budget, where a soup that fed eight for a few pence exclusive of stock was a practical proposition rather than a frugal gesture.